Capital Markets Partner Guide 09

CAPITAL MARKETS
PARTNER GUIDE 2009
INTRODUCTION
FOREWORD
elcome to the Worldwide Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009. In the current economic environment and after having witnessed an unprecedented destruction of capital in their lifetime, established and battle hardened investment professionals could be forgiven for staring wide-eyed at the range of challenges they face. In the last two years new regulation has been introduced that opened up the global markets and intensified both the competitive environment and the need to prove compliance. As profit margins shrink, institutions need to maximise profit from each client by making better use of information and continuously reducing the time it takes to execute trades. They must achieve all of this in an increasingly tough global economy that is on the verge of introducing more regulation and tougher processes that will once again change the playing field. Perhaps because of these unique challenges, the companies and departments that are active in capital markets are often the first to embrace innovative new technologies. Success is awarded those that can provide comprehensive customer service with split-second timing, and minimised risk using a flexible, scalable and low-cost platform that provides a rich user experience. At Microsoft, we are frequently asked to help financial institutions solve difficult problems such as minimising latency, maximising system performance, and improving information management and communication across channels. We work with a wide spectrum of partners around the world to deliver the performance and scalability that todays investment professionals and their clients demand. The Microsoft partners highlighted in this guide provide a range of software and services that can help banks and capital markets firms to maximise profit, lower costs, minimise risk and ensure compliance in a fast-moving global business. I hope you will find this guide useful, thought provoking and informative.
Michel van Leeuwen Managing Director Worldwide Capital Markets Microsoft
2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Active Directory, BizTalk, InfoPath, Microsoft Dynamics, Outlook, SharePoint, SQL Server, Visual Studio, Windows and Windows Server are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft in the US and/or other countries. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
Views expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of Microsoft or Tudor Rose. Acceptance of company listings does not imply official endorsement of the products or services concerned. While every care has been taken to ensure accuracy of content, no responsibility can be taken for any errors and/or omissions. Readers should take appropriate professional advice before acting on any issue raised herein.
The Capital Market Partner Guide 2009 was produced for Microsoft by Tudor Rose (+44 116 222 9900, www.tudor-rose.co.uk)
Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009
CONTENTS
8 2
FEATURE
SPEND IT WISELY How Microsofts Advisor Platform can help financial services enterprises differentiate themselves by providing more holistic customer service 2
20 12
PROFILED
30 26
CITI Citi built its Tick Store Reg NMS solution using SQL Server
20 22
ON THE PLATFORM 8 Sell-side capital markets firms face unique challenges in maximising the profitability of institutional clients. Microsoft has developed the Institutional Client Platform to address their specific needs
RAYMOND JAMES FINANCIAL Raymond James improved branch office efficiency with an integrated CRM solution
STRANGE LANDSCAPE 12 Investment managers must give serious thought to their IT as they negotiate a changing business and regulatory landscape
CRM FOR WEALTH MANAGEMENT PROFESSIONALS 18 Mainstay Partners assessed how wealth management firms are using Dynamics CRM. Here are some examples
TRADING FOR PROFIT OR TRADING TO COMPLY? Andy Hughes discusses how Microsoft can help traders focus on what they do best
COMMENTARY
16
THOMSON FINANCIAL 28 Thomson Financial used a range of Microsoft technologies to refresh its Portia portfolio management system
REUTERS 26 Reuters used SQL Server and Windows Server to achieve a scalable relational database management system
REGNAN 24 Institutional investment research firm Regnan improved organisation, security and service with an integrated Microsoft environment
XENOMORPH 30 Real-time analytics and data management solutions provider Xenomorph worked with Microsoft to deliver high performance on standards-based technology
COMPANIES A-Z 32 The directory lists capital markets solutions providers alphabetically, with information on solutions and contact details. It is a resource designed to help you select the most appropriate partner, rather than a recommendation.
DIRECTORY
FEATURE
SPEND IT WISELY
hen youre a financial advisor or wealth management professional, a lot of money rests on your decisions. Dealing with individual investors is a pressured job the different sets of needs to be assessed, monitored and advised on are as varied and numerous as your customers themselves. Its not just the markets in which they invest that change personal circumstances such as family responsibilities can also have an impact on their investment needs. In addition to these pressures, financial advisors are also facing the challenge of attracting and retaining customers who are becoming increasingly sophisticated and demanding. Commoditisation of products and transactions, and consumer demand for more convenience and value, mean that service is now a key competitive differentiator for financial advisors.
Indeed, with globalisation, the entry of non-financial institutions into the market, and an explosion of new investment vehicles, competition is becoming ever more intense. Advisors are on the frontline in the battle for customers. Financial services companies are looking to increase advisor productivity by offering a broad range of products and services with greater convenience, and the focus is shifting away from transaction fees towards a predictable fee based business. Meanwhile financial services enterprises are pressured to increase revenue but at the same time maximise their current IT infrastructure investments and reduce their total cost of ownership. Doing more with less and improving reporting transparency for risk, regulatory requirements and business intelligence are areas that are increasingly being focused upon in the current economy.
FINANCIAL SERVICES ENTERPRISES WANT TO DIFFERENTIATE

BY PROVIDING MORE HOLISTIC AND SUPERIOR CUSTOMER SERVICE. UNDERLYING TECHNOLOGIES ARE THE KEY TO PROMOTING THE EFFICIENCIES THAT HELP TO ACHIEVE THIS
BRAD PRODGER, DIRECTOR, WORLDWIDE ADVISOR PLATFORM, MICROSOFT
The role of technology in this environment cannot be underestimated. By enabling alternative distribution channels such as online sales and service, it is changing the way financial services companies compete. Accordingly, firms are increasingly focused on the technology platforms that support them and turning to Microsoft for highly scalable, secure and cost effective application platform technology. Time and again, organisations acknowledge the ease of
deployment and savings leveraging Microsoft server technologies.. THE TIME MIX But simply throwing money at the problem isnt the answer in order to support advisors as part of a dynamic business, the system needs to be a part of the companys strategy, connecting information from multiple systems and silos so that advisors can see a full picture not only of how and
FEATURE
WE WANT TO GROW OUR COLLECTIVE KNOWLEDGE BASE

AND DISTIL IT SO IT CAN BE OPENLY CONSUMED BY SUBSIDIARIES ACROSS THE GLOBE
BRAD PRODGER, DIRECTOR, WORLDWIDE ADVISOR PLATFORM, MICROSOFT
when the customer has communicated with the organisation, but also of the size and type of transactions this has resulted in, how their needs are developing, and the products and services that are most relevant to them now. Customers want round-the-clock, upto-the-minute service, and in order to provide that, timing as well as knowledge is critical if advisors are to respond to clients needs and maximise their profitability, they cant afford to miss an opportunity. Because there is so much competition for assets, financial services enterprises want to differentiate by providing more holistic and superior customer service, says Brad Prodger, who oversees the Microsoft Advisor Platform, a framework that enables just such an approach. Underlying technologies are the key to promoting the efficiencies that help to achieve this. With Advisor Platform, were promoting operational efficiencies across three channels financial advisors, call centre representatives and the ability to leverage those same foundational technologies for interactive client internet sites. The platform enables individual investor/client-facing staff to increase the amount of time they spend with their client, and decrease the time spent on administration. Building a platform that can change the balance of time for advisors in this way presents two major challenges for companies: integrating it throughout the business so it can provide the right information and functionality; and ensuring that it is accepted at all levels of the company, so that advisors can and will work productively with it.
LOOKING FORWARD That process of acceptance includes everyone in the company, from business decision makers to technology decision makers, and ultimately end users. In this respect, the presence of Advisor Platform is growing due to its ability to offer a framework that integrates with all levels of the business from the technology to employees mindsets. Advisor Platform is growing rapidly, especially in Western Europe and the United States, says Prodger. Theres a realisation among financial institutions that financial advisors and call centre representatives are already familiar with Microsoft technology they use it every day, at home and at work, but the key to the
OPEN ALL HOURS

CRM is a major feature of the Advisor Platform, and here it benefits from the enhanced capabilities of Dynamics CRM 4.0. Integrated client data is one of the essential building blocks of a CRM solution, and is the main objective of many CRM applications, says Max Fatouretchi, Microsoft EMEA specialist for CRM in the financial industry. Naturally, integrated client data is also useful for developing client profiles and segments, as well as for providing added value and for serving customers individually. Client value traditionally depends on customer equity, which means that the customer monetary value to the organisation must be
Advisor Platform is that those intuitive technologies are integrated to enterprise systems and expose relevant information with powerful workflow capabilities. Perhaps this level of familiarity is exactly what is needed to stimulate a forward-looking approach. Europe is becoming recognised as a centre of financial services technology innovation, and the regions financial firms are able to extend their vision beyond Microsofts undeniable strength as a client-tier technology company to include platform technology. Indeed, when it comes to a fully integrated system that all users will embrace, familiarity at the client level becomes a cornerstone of the platforms strength.In Western Europe, the culture is very forward-looking, adds Prodger. Advisor Platform is selling into insurance, capital markets and banking sectors because firms are open to innovative ways of promoting operational efficiencies at proven levels of security, scalability and competitive costs. Most importantly, they recognise that Advisor Platform enables technology departments and architects to assemble and orchestrate very large initiatives in a very short period of time.
For Prodger, this rate of growth helps to bust the myth that initiatives like this must entail high costs and 12-18 months of work. By promoting operational efficiencies and helping to improve the advisor-client relationship, the Advisor Platform has a direct impact on revenue and profitability, he says. But a strong contribution to that, and to its popularity overall, is that it encompasses many technologies from Microsoft that our clients find easier to deploy and customise over time, and that end users find easy to work with. FUTURE PERFECT No two advisor platforms are the same, as each is tailored to the needs of the organisation it serves. For example, while the platform demonstration environment includes Dynamics CRM at its core, this might not be the CRM platform of choice for customers. In this case, Microsofts framework is designed to easily integrate to enterprise CRM systems, financial planning tools, portfolio accounting utilities and legacy systems. Disparate data sources and applications are connected through Web
determined. Effective CRM gives the financial institution a view of the client and client profitability without neglecting client needs and requirements, and it provides a general approach for putting the customer at the centre of attention. In the Advisor Platform demonstration environment, Dynamics 4.0 is the system of record for client data and drive data from various applications, says Brad Prodger. It becomes the source of truth for advisor, call centre representative and operations, to enable visibility in the client relationship and interoperability with other applications that support financial
advisors wherever they interface. All CRM processes employed by a financial institution derive both from its strategy and vision for CRM, and from its focus on customer needs, adds Fatouretchi: Through CRM, the institution can better provide customers with the appropriate products and customised services. To do that, it must know its customers and their needs. Customer profiles can be developed to establish customer segmentation so that products and services can be tailored to customers, with the goal of increasing the lifetime of customer relationships and raising the share of wallet.
FEATURE
services, while partner applications and Microsoft technologies drive or communicate with back-end systems. Advisor Platform is often implemented as a collaborative portal that gives advisors centralised access to client information and expertise across the institution, helping them offer more holistic advice, increase cross-selling opportunities and enhance regulatory compliance. But the collaborative nature of the concept extends far beyond the institution itself, due to the innovative development model behind it. An important part of the framework is the capabilities assessment utility were currently constructing, explains Prodger. This enables us to ask questions about real business challenges in the client environment, but also to ask specific technology questions within the same framework. This is a quick exercise, taking only a couple of weeks, and it will result in a prescribed architecture that IT people can then consume with actual .NET code on actual servers. Then they can use that to build a proof of concept themselves. Again, Western Europe is among the leaders in the collaborative development process. Particularly in Western Europe, but also in other parts of the world, there are
thought leaders who are picking what weve built as a core platform and making it much better, says Prodger, who envisions giving other parties access to those improvements, so that the demonstration environment becomes a wiki, a shared, collaborative development environment with business demonstration functionality. Financial industry leaders across the globe are asking for that type of environment, he says.
SPRINGBOARD TO SUCCESS
Advisor Platform comes in many shapes and sizes. Here are some examples of how financial institutions have benefited from it. Citigroup Citigroup wanted to provide a Web-based delivery platform to distribute targeted and highly personalised information from 270 disparate data sources to its worldwide workforce in its Global Corporate and Investment Bank. It used Microsoft Windows Server System to create a. .NET Web application that built highly customisable Web pages targeted at its investment bankers. The system gave Citigroup increased business agility and responsiveness with an extremely rich and customisable Web-based user interface. Scalability was improved and the organisation has benefited from an extensible content retrieval design, that supports new and existing document formats. In addition, the development and deployment of mobile solutions has been simplified. We created a portal which enabled individuals to flexibly create their own views while maintaining the rigours of a system which could be relied on to ensure the integrity of the information, says Peter Estlin, CFO of global banking at Citigroup. www.citigroup.com
Part of what we want to do is to assemble this framework so that its easy to consume, so we can leverage it to learn more about the markets and capture intellectual property from those initiatives, concludes Prodger. Well then repurpose that learning so that over time, the framework will iteratively become stronger and stronger. We want to grow our collective knowledge base and distil it so it
can be openly consumed by subsidiaries across the globe. Were very much for an open architecture that enables both the business concept side and the technology side to consume the information we create, to contribute their thought leadership in improving that information, and through their experiences with their clients, to collaborate in building a growing base of knowledge.
Raymond James Raymond James Financial is a global financial services firm with more than 4,600 advisors. Because 80 per cent of these advisors are independent contractors who operate remotely, the company found it challenging to share business and customer information. It needed a customer relationship management solution that could support its remote workforce, integrate easily with existing business systems, and offer compelling capabilities to encourage widespread adoption. With independent advisors in 2,200 locations worldwide, IT management was extremely decentralised; software standards were not enforced, and contract advisors were free to install the tools they preferred. The company estimates that at one time, more than 2,500 different thirdparty databases were in use. Accessing key customer data was difficult for all but the advisor who maintained the account, and information such as customer notes, best practices and reports, was not shared among the branch offices or between the branches and main office. The disparate systems also left the home office with no feasible way to track customer relationships and no central repository for this valuable business information.
Raymond James adopted Microsoft Dynamics CRM as a global standard, with more than 1,800 current users, and with plans to make the solution available to nearly 5,000 people across its branch offices. Today, Raymond James offers a powerful solution that enhances customer service, helps ensure regulatory compliance, and integrates easily with the business tools its advisors use every day. Features that help to streamline customer service functions include customisable onscreen dashboards where advisors can access meeting notes, sales reports, forecasts and other customer data. Advisors are also able to take advantage of the notes pane feature, which provides users with an intelligent way to record freeform information about customers and opportunities. The notes pane improves the user experience by automatically attaching date and user-stamped tags to create a chronological record of information during a customer interaction, meeting, or other situation. Being able to store all of our advisors data in one centralised location is great, says Shelly. With all of our client data in one spot, Microsoft Dynamics CRM is able to help us with compliance. www.raymondjames.com
FEATURE
ON THE PLATFORM
verywhere you look, customers are benefiting from an increasing number of channels and choices, and making businesses work harder for their share of wallet. Financial services firms, like other industries, have realised that in order to maximise profitability, they need to improve their understanding of each customer. It has been long recognised that businesses need a 360-degree view of customer activity across all channels and product lines, and this is reflected in growing investment in customer relationship management (CRM) technologies. But for wholesale financial services firms, there has been a lack of CRM systems that specifically address the challenges they face. That is, until now. Sell-side capital markets financial institutions such as broker-dealers are seeing decreasing margins on the products they sell, says Ian Warford, EMEA industry director for capital markets at Microsoft, which has joined forces with GaleForce Solutions, Information Management Group (IMGroup), IPC and Lab49 to launch the Institutional Client Platform. Its a very competitive market, with many different product lines such as equities, foreign exchange, fixed income or derivatives. In this environment, simply selling products isnt a great way to make money. Increasingly, banks are trying to move their product focus, creating sales teams devoted to equity, foreign exchange and so on. Theyre trying to get a better picture of what their customers are trying to achieve through their interaction with them, so they can create cross-product selling opportunities. Institutional clients, like hedge funds, tend to use investment banks as a services operation, says Vivake Gupta, founder of Lab49. Many of the traders who now work
within hedge funds used to work at investment banks. As internal traders at the investment bank, they were used to receiving in inordinate amount of functionality, detail and interactivity from their trading systems. As hedge funds get more sophisticated, these, now external, traders are starting to demand the same level of functionality that traders within the banks get, and they want it now. This is just one example of increasing sophistication among institutional clients, says Gupta. In order to provide that functionality, broker-dealers must deal with a complex and shifting number of tools, says Colin Silvester, director of product management at IPC: The trading environment is hugely complex. In the lifecycle of a trade, there are quite a few different tools or applications that traders have to utilise, or refer to, or at least plan to what is actually used is different case by case. THE NEED FOR CRM The notion of using CRM to understand customer behaviour, profitability and historical communications is fundamental to wealth management, and similarly for the institutional sell-side, says Aziz Pirani, president and CEO of GaleForce Solutions, which brings to the Institutional Client Platform a wealth of experience gained through its work on the Microsoft Advisor Platform. The challenge today is that sell-side sales organisations dont know how to monetise research by understanding how it translates into buy-side transactions. They need to understand client profitability and behaviour, and client preferences. Its really about understanding the client history, position, preferences and profitability, from which you can gain insights into how you optimise product mixes for those clients.
INCREASINGLY, BANKS ARE
TRYING TO MOVE THEIR PRODUCT FOCUS, CREATING DEDICATED SALES TEAMS

IAN WARFORD, EMEA INDUSTRY DIRECTOR FOR CAPITAL MARKETS, MICROSOFT
As banks become more sophisticated as services operations, theyre realising that they dont have that much consolidated information about the end user, says Gupta. As margins on institutional sales shrink because of competitive pressure, banks need to improve the quality of every single interaction. Different parts of the bank deal with institutional clients at different touch points, but each salesperson wishes they could gather all that information together in one place and get a consolidated view of end user then they could have a rich telephone conversation with them that actually deals with their issues and problems. The technology to achieve much of this already exists for example, rich Internet application technology such as Silverlight enables end users to do many routine tasks themselves that they previously had to ask salespeople to do. But until now, little attention has been paid to integrating those technologies into a solution that specifically addresses the issues involved in institutional client relations. Most of the financial institutions within capital markets have some kind of CRM, says Silvester. But as a technology or application set for traders, its still relatively in its infancy in terms of being deployed or utilised. Simplifying the route through a trade will also provide a common basis for information to be shared across those tools, making the process considerably less arduous for the trader. The vision for the Institutional Client Platform is not simply a cross-product, single view of the customer, says Warford. Its a single, cross-functional view of what the customer is doing. Thats a big dream, but increasingly, as the credit crunch bites, banks are trying to achieve it. Indeed, for an
FEATURE
COMMUNICATION, INFORMATION, INTEGRATION

The Institutional Client Platform integrates both communications and communications information into the trading environment, significantly simplifying the route through a trade while enriching customer relationships. Its an extremely simple process to launch a phone call and talk to the customer immediately from within the Institutional Client Platform, says IPCs Silvester. Its about integrating communications information, and smoothly transitioning between different communications media. For example, if a trader had an instant message session running with their customer and they want to launch a telephone call, the Institutional Client Platform can enable that to be done through a single click. As the trader switches between communications media, his or her interaction with the customer is also enriched by more detailed, usable information. For example, says Silvester, when you refer to your customer relationship record for a particular customer, you can see the dates, times and duration of the last ten phone calls. The history of your communication becomes an information source in and of itself, giving you more information about the state of your relationship as a whole who was the last person who talked to this customer, and when? Has this customer been in frequent contact? This kind of information is important, but the next step is to relate that history to your trades with the customer, which highlights which customers are most profitable in relation to the time spent calling them. Weve already created this solution with Microsoft, and it is in use with customers now. The feedback were receiving from them is that its giving them a view of their business at micro and macro levels that they never had before. Theyre using the information to improve their understanding of their customers and make sure they deliver the best level of customer service.
example of this, one only has to look at UBS, which is turning the focus of its investment division towards corporate and institutional clients while reducing the amount of capital committed to real estate and securitisation business. A TIGHTLY FOCUSED TEAM The Institutional Client Platform team is intentionally small, involving just four partners at this stage, each intent on creating a truly valuable solution. Its a very tight group, because we wanted to focus on ensuring quality and achieving something concrete that we can later extend outwards, says Warford. Weve picked the best-of-breed products for each area so that we have a solid story to tell, adds Gupta. Otherwise, you can end up with two or three products in each class of offering, and the solution becomes more of a marketing exercise than a real implementation exercise. Were really interested in seeing this go live, rather than just spreading the names of partners around. Having a concrete deliverable is a big part of that.
The calibre of the partners and their ability to work together is an important factor within the partnership. Microsoft has a significant footprint in terms of deployed systems throughout our customer base, so we share a substantial mutual customer sector, says Silvester. We can work together efficiently to create a platform that has true relevance to capital markets firms and their customers. The Institutional Client Platform is an example of Microsofts commitment to demonstrating the talent it has in its own ecosystem, and to bring together sets of skills that address very particular market segments, adds Pirani. The project is very focused on the biggest pain point in the market right now sell-side client relationships and optimisation and its using best-of-breed solutions to address this. The teams initial focus is on integrating distribution, CRM and client analytics with the turret system the high-end telephone system used by traders and salespeople. Its a grand vision, but we needed to start small, comments Warford. We focused on the
distribution or sales function of a brokerage firm things like how to bring on a customer faster, CRM and client analytics. Salespeople need to understand exactly when a customer may trade a particular foreign exchange instrument, whether its quarterly or monthly. If they know that, they can call the customer just before they do that trade, to make sure they do it with them. For example, if the turret is integrated into the system, then whenever somebody calls, information can be sent through to the CRM system and the details displayed on the desktop. In addition to coordinating information and simplifying transition from one application or process to the next, were working to embed communications into that environment, adds Silvester. So at each stage, from any part of the trade cycle, if the trader wants to call the customer they can pull information from anywhere within the environment to put that call together with a single click. The platform embeds communications and communications information into the environment. Clearly, each partner has tremendous respect for the others, and each plays a crucial role. Lab49 has terrific knowledge and experience in the capital market space, says Pirani. The turret partners provide great communications for their clients, which integrate into CRM. All the partners have deep knowledge in this space, and are best of breed today. The CRM really provides a point of integration for all these pieces. The different components in the Institutional Client Platform are all independent products, adds Gupta. As a blueprint, it involves all these products. But the bank that it goes into may already have a lot of existing infrastructure, and adapting the solution for the time and place its applied is a difficult task. You need to know about the internal product infrastructure and the technology ecosystem for each particular bank, and what pieces can and cant be used due to compliance or various other reasons. If there are pieces that cant be used, you need to know how to integrate the rest of the solution into the existing ecosystem, and customise it for the needs of their particular segment of end users, of institutional sales and expertise.
PLATFORM PARTNERS
Four partners are working with Microsoft on the Institutional Client Platform, each with a specialist area of expertise: GaleForce Solutions is a leading provider of CRM software for the financial services industry IMGroup is an award-winning provider of end-to-end business intelligence, data warehousing and collaborative solutions. It will be responsible for client analytics functionality. IPC, a leading provider of indispensable communications solutions, will be responsible for integrating the communication infrastructure Lab49 is a consultancy firm specialising in building advanced technology applications for the financial services industry. It will be responsible for the delivery, integration and customisation of the platform for customers. This is something that weve been working on independently, and we were keen to be involved, says Lab49 founder Vivake Gupta. As a consulting company, we do bespoke development for a lot of different people. A lot of the developments that we started working on ended up going in this direction, so it was very exciting to be involved. Developing a solution to this problem area would give us a set of standards and practices, and an architecture that we could reuse. Wed have a piece of intellectual property that can be applicable to many people in the industry without having to start from scratch every time. There are probably two or three main competing technologies that provide this kind of application framework, and Microsoft is definitely one of the most significant players, says IPCs Silvester. For us, this partnership demonstrates how we can work together and provide mutually beneficial solutions to our customers, simply by sitting down and working out where we can tie together and where we can innovate together. But it also demonstrates that our customers can gain benefits through their collection of vendors working together.
11
FEATURE
STRANGE LANDSCAPE
nvestment management is an intricate business. Research, analysis, dealing, settlement, and reporting all have to be done correctly, and mistakes can cost millions. This difficult terrain is becoming more challenging as regulations such as the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) transform the industry to a global marketplace where entrants of all sizes can compete. Every millisecond that can be shaved off of the time it takes to trade is a potential step ahead of the competition. But the evolving industry is also an unfamiliar territory, as new exchanges enter the market and all players develop ever-more sophisticated ways to analyse and execute trades, and to stay informed on the activities of their rivals. In this intensely competitive landscape, successful navigation demands speed and a certain amount of stealth. In order to achieve this, financial institutions need to give serious thought to
their IT. Legacy systems simply cant handle the volume of information from various channels fast enough to ensure competitive trading. Indeed, according to research by TowerGroup, updating or replacing legacy systems and improving infrastructure are key priorities for brokerage firms. Firms are motivated by drivers like revenue growth, regulation, technology innovation and IT management, says analyst Dushyant Shahrawat in TowerGroups report, 2007 Top 10 for brokerage firms: business drivers, strategic responses and IT priorities. One area in which firms are seriously considering automating processes and replacing legacy systems is derivatives, because enormous volumes mean that creaking applications and infrastructure are holding the entire business to ransom. Revamping the infrastructure has become a crucial priority to support next-generation trading efforts and to leverage new approaches in technology like grid computing, server
consolidation, and hardware optimisation. Many companies are turning to automated methods for gathering and analysing information, to enable split-second responses. Automated trade execution has been around for many years, and was traditionally the domain of proprietary trading desks in investment banks and specialist hedge funds, says Jean Williams, product business owner at Asset Control. In the last few years, larger brokerage houses have made their trading algorithms available to investment managers, usually at a lower cost than manually worked orders. Algorithms have allowed brokers to reduce the number of active traders, but led to an investment in mathematically skilled analysts and programmers to develop and test these algorithms. As a result, investment managers benefit from reduced execution costs, timely execution of larger orders, enhanced trade analytics, and compliance with regulations for best execution and MiFID.
In addition, continues Williams, some institutions use more specialised automated investment decision-making: Many hedge funds use quantitative models that determine which instruments to trade, as well as how and when to trade them. These practices are almost never used by traditional long-only investment managers. Practitioners of automated investment decisions often cite that their quantitative methods remove any inherent bias that is introduced by manual analysis of markets, and claim that their investment decision-making process is 100 per cent repeatable. In practice, the markets are constantly changing and models always need to be modified. The popularity of automated trading is due to a number of factors, says Brian Sentance, chief executive officer of Xenomorph. For example, there are cost savings involved: why pay an expensive trader to manually implement something that a computer can do? And once automated,
13
FEATURE
THE EXPONENTIAL GROWTH IN THE AMOUNT OF DATA A
FINANCIAL FIRM MUST PROCESS AND THE SHORTENING USEFUL LIFESPAN OF ANY NEW ALGORITHM CONTINUES TO PLACE INCREDIBLE DEMANDS ON CAPITAL MARKETS FIRMS
ANDY HUGHES, DIRECTOR OF INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS, MICROSOFT
trading algorithms are commercially scalable they can be made available to more users, easily and at low cost. The technologies most widely used in the field of automated trading are often referred to as complex event processing tools that can be used by business users to define eventbased decision processes to help automate day-to-day activities. In order to automate investment decision making, the challenge remains the collection of vast amounts of data from disparate sources, the cleansing and validation of that data, and presenting it to a proprietary algorithm for analysis, adds Williams. The quality of raw investment data is rarely sufficient to support these processes without a supplementary data management system. The processing power and delivery technology are now here to deal with the everincreasing amounts of data involved, says Sentance. Trading venues are becoming fragmented, as regulations such as MiFID and RegNMS increase the number of venues for trading securities, and hence the number of places where prices should be searched for best execution of a trade. In addition, the decimalisation of trading prices in the US in recent years has decreased average trade transaction size but resulted in dramatic increases in the number of transactions placed. The exponential growth in the amount of data a financial firm must process and the shortening useful lifespan of any new algorithm continues to place incredible demands on capital markets firms, says Andy Hughes, director of investment management solutions at Microsoft. Excel has long been the standard for analysing data and constructing financial models, and Microsoft has made significant investments in new
products such as Windows HPC Server 2008 and SharePoint Server 2007 with Excel Services, which, when used together, can help customers continue to build their financial models quickly, share them securely with colleagues and trading partners, and deliver calculation scalability and fault tolerance across many machines containing multiple processors. Of course, trading is a context-sensitive as well as a time-sensitive business. The seemingly inexorable rise of the algorithm has raised questions for example, how will the role of humans evolve alongside these technologies, and how accurate are automated processes in the face of unexpected events? Increased automation has already had a significant impact on the roles of human traders, says Williams. Statistical testing of algorithms is frequently undertaken and the overall levels of performance are generally superior to those of a human trader. Due to their investment in automated systems, brokerage houses have fewer traders processing orders. However, additional investment is usually required in the areas of risk management, audit and compliance. In truth, algorithms are unlikely to automate people out of a job rather, the human role in investment management and analytics will evolve with the technology. Algorithms are not foolproof, says Williams. Unexpected events will eventually occur in any market. The best an algorithm developer can do is to try and minimise the impact of an extreme situation. Key to this are both rigorous testing and talented people. Models can only be tested against situations that have occurred in the market in the past, using massive databases of price movements going back many years,
adds Williams. Consequently, models are only as good as their analysts, programmers and testers, although certain market events are often blamed on poorly implemented models for example, the Japanese market crash as a result of unchecked computergenerated sell orders; or the recent sub-prime credit crunch resulting from incomplete risk analysis and valuations of credit securities. There is still very much a place for human intuition, creativity and ingenuity in putting together trading ideas, says Sentance. Certainly, there will always be new, more complex products that will be handled manually until they become standardised and more mainstream. That said, automated trading will dominate and continue to grow through all of the vanilla products and markets. Sentance continues: Some of the current issues in automated trading include data quality, with the usual adage that bad data means bad decisions. Another issue is time to market with an idea while low latency is a key technical concern in being fastest, how quickly a new trading idea can be put into production in the market is a key concern. The usability/ease of use with which traders can create, simulate, back-test and deploy a new trading model is vital in this regard. The area of back-testing seems to be underresourced at the moment, and we believe this will be a growth area for technology. As Williams points out, increased automation has resulted in significant number of new tools, typically point solutions that lack integration with existing systems and processes: Modern investment managers must develop and manage an architecture to support investment operations that not only
directly addresses the management of information assets within the firm, but also complements the unique workflows of these best-of-breed solutions. Sentance believes that automated trading will make its mark on the shape of the industry. There is likely to be increased consolidation in the broker market, as the battle becomes a more intellectual and technical one with stiff competition facing those institutions that do not have the resources and expertise to differentiate their offerings to clients. Additionally, through automation, more exotic instruments will gradually become accessible to a wider investment base, resulting in yet more assets to trade. There can be no doubt that now is an exciting transitional period for investment managers, and that this is no time for them to rest on their laurels. In recent years, the amount of trading analysis undertaken has grown tremendously, observes Williams. The performance demands placed on investment managers requires them to access new markets and to trade new instruments. Although tools are increasingly available to support the analysis required for these requirements, the underlying problem still lies in accessing all the necessary data when it is often siloed within an organisation. This accessibility and deployment issue has resulted in an exponential demand for frontoffice focused data management solutions that can rapidly adapt to new requirements as they arise. This article was originally published in the Spring 2008 issue of Finance on Windows magazine
15
COMMENTARY
TRADING FOR PROFIT OR TRADING TO COMPLY?

ANDY HUGHES LOOKS AT HOW MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGIES CAN HELP TRADERS TO FOCUS ON WHAT THEY DO BEST
or traders, its always been about being creative and innovative in unlocking value via trades based around arbitrage, hedges and innovative financial structures. However, new requirements such as US Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) Rule 17a-3 and 17a-4, Regulation NMS, risk analytics and market reference data requirements have all placed trade compliance in the spotlight. The result is a need for a more holistic and integrated approach to regulatory compliance and risk management practices. these functions assume great relevance for the capital markets trading lifecycle. US SEC RULE 17A-3 AND 17A-4 US SEC Rule 17a-3 requires broker-dealers to maintain certain records, including trade blotters, asset and liability ledgers, income ledgers, customer account ledgers, securities records, order tickets, trade confirmations, trial balances, and a range of employment related documents. Rule 17a-4 specifies the manner in which the records created in accordance with Rule 17a-3 and certain other records produced by broker-dealers must be maintained. It also specifies the required retention periods for these records. In combination, Rules 17a-3 and 17a-4 require broker-dealers to create and preserve, in an easily accessible manner, a comprehensive record of each security transaction they effect and of their securities business in general. As a result, storage and retention policies, archiving and retrieval, and search capabilities have become important. All types of existing and new electronic communications such as email, instant messaging (IM) and voice mail need to be stored and handled in a more structured and integrated manner. US REGULATION NMS1 Regulation NMS (RegNMS) includes: Rule 610, which addresses access to markets Rule 611, which provides inter-market price priority for displayed and accessible quotations Rule 612, which establishes minimum pricing increments Amendments to the joint-industry plans and rules governing the dissemination of market data.
INNOVATION VERSUS COMPLIANCE Capital markets participants have always prided themselves on being able to stretch and stress-test the boundaries to unlock value via trade arbitrage, exotic financial structures, complex number crunching and leading-edge use of technology. Credit derivatives, algorithmic trading and hedge funds are but a few examples of such innovation. With its focus on efficient use and arbitrage of economic capital, the industry has also constantly explored new areas for efficiency, productivity and innovation, be it STP, DMA, TCA, best execution, latency or high-performance computing. Based on some of the new regulatory compliance and risk management practices in capital markets, three broad but consistent themes can be seen to emerge across trade lifecycle compliance: Electronic business records Structured and unstructured data Market data management. In the past, we probably would dismiss the above as IT functions. But in todays world,
Hence the need to collect, store, analyse and report market data becomes a critical business function. Reg NMS broadly requires trading centres to establish and enhance policies, workflows and processes, documentation, fair and nondiscriminatory access to quotations, limit on access fees and disclosure mechanisms for best bid or best offers. OTHER REGULATIONS The European Union Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) is another regulation that focuses on best execution, process, market data and transparency in reporting, and impacts the European operations of capital markets firms. The recent amendments to the US Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), put into effect by the Supreme Court to govern civil procedures in US courts, is another related development that will alter the way companies retain and delete data. Broadly, the new rules focus on being able to identify where important data is located and develop a plan for retrieving it. IMPLICATIONS Traders can expect challenges in the way trade lifecycle information is managed across the value chain. Affected areas include electronic business records, structured and unstructured data, OMS/EMS technology, trading systems, quotations and market reference data from a corporate actions reporting perspective. Traders typically deal with a large amount of diverse forms of electronic communications during a trade lifecycle. Hence, it becomes critical to plan for a holistic and integrated approach to help traders deal with these new operational requirements for electronic business records, structured and unstructured data, and attempt to reduce operational tasks and focus on the market trades. Traders expect simplicity, ease of use and integration with existing front-office technology and desktop tools while dealing with these new operational requirements.
MICROSOFT OFFICE SHAREPOINT SERVER 2007

With its record centre capabilities, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 offers an integrated approach to handling structured and unstructured data. The Microsoft integrated innovation building blocks and platform can provide significant value by offering a unified communications platform that combines VoIP, e-mail and instant messaging.
MICROSOFT OFFICE
A set of technologies included in the 2007 release of the Microsoft Office system can be used as building blocks in conjunction with a sound compliance strategy to help address the challenges of dealing with structured and unstructured data and information, and enhance productivity. The integrated search capability across desktop and intranet becomes critical during an electronic discovery process. Organisations can also use Information Rights Management (IRM) to better protect and maintain greater control over digital information, including confidential and sensitive spreadsheets.
Microsofts collaborative solutions are used by many global organisations to create content, influence corporate culture and manage change. Microsofts Financial Services group works with a rich ecosystem of leading industry solution providers to help meet the specific needs of the capital markets industry. They represent a powerful blend of cost-effective and quickly implemented solutions designed to help lay the groundwork for future innovation and success in a world of increasing regulatory and trade compliance requirements, so that traders can do what they do best trade for profit instead of unduly focusing on the consequences of non-compliance.
17
COMMENTARY
CRM FOR WEALTH MANAGEMENT PROFESSIONALS

MICROSOFT DYNAMICS CRM IS AN INCREASINGLY POPULAR CHOICE FOR MANY WEALTH MANAGEMENT ORGANISATIONS WANTING TO CAPITALISE ON NEW OPPORTUNITIES AND FACILITATE REGULATORY COMPLIANCE. HERE ARE SOME EXAMPLES OF HOW THEY ARE USING THE TECHNOLOGY
ealth management firms are facing new client demands and competitive challenges. To deliver personalised services and advice, capitalise on new opportunities and facilitate compliance with regulatory requirements, firms are looking for customer relationship management (CRM) solutions that can help them manage complex client relationships in concert with business processes. For many firms focused on wealth management, Microsoft Dynamics CRM is an increasingly popular choice. To more clearly understand how wealth management firms are using Dynamics CRM, Microsoft turned to IT advisory firm Mainstay Partners for an independent assessment. Mainstay Partners interviewed a number of firms to identify the measurable benefits they have achieved through deploying Dynamics CRM. Their stories are presented in the customer profiles below. Since implementation, Dynamics CRM has reduced the amount of time financial advisors spend on administrative tasks, freeing them to provide better client service and acquire new clientele. Benefits include a 60-80 per cent reduction in time needed to create customer reports; and 50-75 per cent less time spent preparing for client-review meetings. RAIFFEISENBANK KLEINWALSERTAL Raiffeisenbank Kleinwalsertal is Austrias largest cooperative bank and one of Europes most successful financial services institutions. Before implementing Microsoft Dynamics CRM, advisors juggled at least five different applications when gathering customer information, making it nearly impossible for them to gain a unified, up-to-date client view. Dynamics CRM integrated easily with Raiffeisenbanks existing banking applications, and advisors now work with a centralised, 360-degree view of customer data that enables them to quickly respond to queries and deliver advice based on accurate, comprehensive information. The company can also avoid non-compliance fines by meeting Austrian Government requirements for reporting on customer satisfaction levels. Equally important, advisors can now spend more time with clients, enabling them to uncover new business opportunities while enhancing service. Dynamics CRM also enables Raiffeisenbank to measure the effectiveness of marketing programmes and business development activities. Raiffeisenbank expects to realise the following benefits:
TRANEL FINANCIAL GROUP Illinois-based Tranel Financial Groups mission was to move beyond customer satisfaction to customer delight, fostering a strong competitive edge. The group needed an intuitive CRM solution that advisors could use to quickly capture, record and access all client information. By delivering a full history of interactions within seconds, an effective CRM solution would not only increase customer satisfaction, but also serve as the basis for more accurate reporting. Dynamics CRM offered Tranel a familiar, easy-to-use solution that users readily adopted.
Two per cent increase in revenue 60-70 per cent decrease in time to create customer satisfaction reports 17 per cent increase in employee productivity. CARLSON CAPITAL MANAGEMENT Like most wealth management firms, Carlson Capital Management (CCM) relies on referrals to help grow its business, with more than 80 percent of new clients coming from referrals. To accommodate a growing number of client relationships while preserving high standards of service to existing clients, the firm needed an efficient and effective way of storing all client contact information, recent communications, portfolio data and historical information in one system. It needed to simplify how it tracked client interactions, from meetings and phone conversations to referrals, event invitations, or even a welcome gift. Since deploying Dynamics CRM, CCM has gained a 360-degree view of client information and can efficiently extract data, so advisors have information when they need it. The company is in a stronger position to fully service clients. Any team member can quickly access thorough information about a client, helping them to provide clients with what they need. CCM predicts that Dynamics CRM will deliver a 75 per cent decrease in time spent on data searches, as well as 40 per cent savings in campaign costs. SECURITY BENEFIT Kansas-based Security Benefit is a growing financial services firm with more than 800 employees. To expand the reach of sales efforts and fuel growth, the company relies both on internal staff and field sales teams, which are spread across 40 locations and spend much of their time at onsite client meetings. They rely on information and updates from the head office to prepare for these meetings. After each client meeting, the external team spent up to six hours synchronising data from their laptops to the
contact management system wasting time, draining profitability, and increasing the risk of errors. Security Benefit realised that business growth depended on peoples ability to communicate and coordinate information quickly across internal and external teams. It replaced its outdated contact management system with Dynamics CRM, which it was able to integrate with every area of its existing infrastructure. Outside sales team can now access the information entered by head office staff, helping them work from the field with confidence and provide a better customer experience. Dynamics CRM brings Security Benefit increased agility and improved competitive advantage, as well as a 50 per cent savings in CRM system operating costs. HGCAPITAL European sector equity investor HgCapital needed to provide easy access to customer information and contacts for employees who are often out of the office. After implementing Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile, employees can remotely access the information on virtually any Web-enabled device in real time. Because of offline and remote access, HgCapital employees can now quickly access critical customer information when they are making client visits. They are also able to effectively analyse intermediary relationships and deal flow. A WEALTH OF ADVANTAGES As wealth management firms try to stand out in the marketplace by improving customer satisfaction levels and customer loyalty, they look toward solutions that can deliver a holistic view of the customer and customer service functions while being easy to integrate into existing banking applications. For each of the wealth management firms interviewed by Mainstay Partners, using Dynamics CRM has helped them deliver improved service, create a customer-centric approach, build better client relationships, and gain competitive advantage.
19
PROFILED
CITI
itis suite of Lava technology products has earned a reputation for marketleading performance and innovation in one of the worlds most demanding computational environments providing realtime feeds across multiple stock markets to help traders achieve the best execution prices for their customers. The suite of solutions provides real-time aggregated market data cross multiple liquidity pools including the New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq and other major US exchanges. The Lava ColorBook solution integrates the feeds from multiple liquidity pools for display on a single-screen montage to give clients an integrated direct market access (DMA) solution. Before this, traders accessing multiple markets had separate, nonintegrated systems sitting on their desk. The Lava ColorMaker solution builds marketmaking capabilities on top of ColorBook by integrating price discovery, direct access and quote management into a single application. Pioneers in creating DMA solutions, the Lava technology team prides itself in having been the first to provide access to all the US market centres. When the team created its first solutions, its technical architects had
Solution Tick Store Reg NMS solution Benefits Competitive advantage performance; reduced compliance query response times; agility to meet customer needs; scalability; lowest TCO Technologies Microsoft Application Platform including Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Partner Microsoft www.microsoft.com
experience in building Unix-based solutions for the financial services industry. Mindful of expense, they determined that redundant PCs could provide the same or better reliability as other platforms at a fraction of the cost. They decided to build Lava solutions using the Microsoft Application Platform. Recently, the team again considered a range of technology choices as it prepared to create a new solution to help it comply with regulations from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Regulation NMS (Reg NMS) was published in June 2005 with a final phase-in required by October 2007. At the heart of Reg NMS is the Order Protection Rule, which requires trading firms to execute a trade against the best bid or offer in the national market system. Reg NMS also requires that trading firms be able to demonstrate to investors that the best price was given. Compliance requires the capture and storage of vast data sets, so that in the event of a query, a trader can recreate pricing for any given stock across all equity pools at the exact time the trade was executed. When this project started we really didnt even consider Microsoft because providing Reg NMS compliance is so demanding, adds Rocco Mangino, Citis senior vice president of product development for Lava technology. We were looking at specialised solutions that had been created specifically for tick storage and retrieval, but they were very expensive, and would have required our obtaining new skill sets to deploy and manage. Among those who believed the Microsoft Application Platform could support Reg NMS compliance was Ann Neidenbach, managing director at Citi. The requirements were extraordinary processing what has now grown to more than 200,000 updates per second across more than 100 million rows while supporting query responses of less than two seconds, says Neidenbach. The development team simply didnt think SQL Server could do it, but Id seen how SQL
Server had worked for Nasdaq and believed that it could. A comparison of possible solutions was evaluated to determine which technology platform best met the requirements for creating a Reg NMS solution that could keep up with peak demands exceeding 200,000 messages per second, and that could scale into the future to keep up with the rapid growth in equities trading. We held a bake-off against other technology vendors and Microsoft won on performance, says Hays. The bonus was that it was the lowest cost solution and provided better flexibility as well. Citis Lava technology group developed its Reg NMS solution, called the Tick Store, using SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition (64-bit) running on the Windows Server 2003 operating system. Tick Store includes some 70 terabytes of data stored in zipped flat files, each holding one days data from one trading system. The solution grows by about 30 gigabytes per day, adding a terabyte of historical data every 33 days or so. It is hosted on an HP ProLiant DL585 server computer with eight 64-bit AMD Opteron processors and 32 gigabytes of RAM. When fielding a Reg NMS query about pricing, the relevant data is imported from the flat files into the SQL Server relational environment of the Tick Stores database. The Tick Store includes a key that associates the order routing with the market data. We can regenerate any past day from the archive, using the order number and time of execution linked to the historic data, says Doug Leyens, vice president of product development for Lava technology at Citi. We can recreate the exact market montage for any given point in time. Building the Tick Store using the Microsoft Application Platform has enhanced performance so well that the Lava technology team values it as a competitive advantage. With Tick Store support for pumping historical data, as needed, into the Tick
Database relational environment, compliance query response times have gone from hours to less than a second. The solution also provides the agility to meet internal and customer needs, scalability to match trading growth, and the lowest total cost of ownership of any solution that Citi looked at. SQL Server has continued to scale to meet our needs, says Neidenbach. And we see no end in sight for that scaling.
21
PROFILED
RAYMOND JAMES FINANCIAL

lobal financial services provider Raymond James Financial found it challenging to share business and customer information with its advisors, 80 per cent of whom are independent contractors operating remotely. IT management was decentralised; software standards were not enforced, and contract advisors were free to install the tools they preferred. Indeed, the company estimates that at one time, more than 2,500 different third-party databases were in use. Our contractors are all over the country all independent and saving information on their hard drives, says Mike Shelly, vice president of business technology management for Raymond James. But they were not backing up their data. It was really almost a corporate failure in terms of what customer relationship management (CRM) meant to Raymond James. The company recognised that the disconnected information systems were having a negative impact on customer service. Client calls and other information were not tracked efficiently, resulting in discrepancies in information among the branches. The main office needed to better understand its relationship with all of the branch offices
Solution Integrated CRM solution Benefits Improved efficiency across branch offices; easy user adoption; enhanced customer service; enables compliance Technologies Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0, Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 Partner Microsoft Services www.microsoft.com
before it could view the big picture of how Raymond James managed its customer relationships. Our challenge as a global firm is to maximise our branch efficiency by providing the right tools for our financial advisors, says Shelly. With so many different databases, we lacked information sharing. We knew we had to get the branches the ability to access one system for greater efficiency. Raymond James realised it needed to offer a CRM solution that could seamlessly integrate with its advisors existing systems while improving data-tracking capabilities and providing insights that would enhance customer service. But because the deployment was an opt-in programme, the company also knew that any standard it adopted would have to be a very compelling product one that promoted easy user adoption while providing tangible benefits to advisors in the field. The Raymond James deployment team worked with advisors in the field to gain a sense of the work patterns and preferences that would influence their acceptance of a CRM solution. In an effort to increase enthusiasm and facilitate adoption in the field, the company kept these advisors informed and involved throughout the deployment process. Raymond James considered several CRM programs including OnDemand, ACT, GoldMine Enterprise, Pivotal and SalesLogix, before choosing Microsoft Dynamics CRM for its flexibility, adaptability and affordability. In addition, because Dynamics CRM was designed to partner with applications based on the Microsoft Office system, it was easy for Raymond James to integrate the solution with its own corporate technology systems. In the field, where most advisors were already familiar with Microsoft technologies, the consistent interface made Dynamics CRM a comfortable fit for users. Integration with Microsoft Office Outlook was critical, says Shawn Tabor, technology product manager for Raymond James
Financial. All of our branch users open Outlook every day, and thats the tool theyre comfortable with. In addition, support for mobility, including remote access to customer data from portable devices and online or offline functionality, helped Microsoft Dynamics CRM mesh seamlessly with the way the advisors work. The implementation process was backed by the technical help of Microsoft Services, but the overall system integration was primarily managed by Raymond Jamess own fivemember development team. I think it speaks well to the tool as a whole that something so complex as integration, and as potentially difficult to do, could be handled by our own internal staff, remarks Tabor. To accommodate the geographically dispersed locations and to encourage adoption by remote users, Raymond James developed a virtually silent deployment and accomplished it with minimal interruption to the users. The silent installation really paid off for us in a big way, explains Tabor. We simply place a link to the installation package on a navigation console that we provide to all our advisors. Dynamics CRM is available alongside all of our other standard applications. It couldnt be easier for the people in the field. Advisors can now use customisable onscreen dashboards to access meeting notes, sales reports, forecasts, and other customer data, while the notes pane feature provides an intelligent way to record freeform information about customers and opportunities. This improves the user experience by automatically attaching date and user-stamped tags to create a chronological record of information during a customer interaction, meeting or other situation. During the implementation, Raymond James discovered that the data tracking functions from Dynamics CRM also applied to processes for other roles throughout the organisation. For example, its legal
department found that the comprehensive client documentation captured by Dynamics CRM adds greater evidence in litigation situations. Being able to store all of our advisors data in one centralised location is great, says Shelly. With all of our client data in one spot, Dynamics CRM is able to help us with compliance. Looking ahead, Raymond James is promising quarterly releases of new features and functionality to the existing system, including business intelligence tools. The company expects that these updates will provide additional value to the independent advisors and further stimulate adoption across the many branches. Raymond James also hopes to launch Dynamics CRM within its home office headquarters. Deploying Dynamics CRM to our home office, in addition to our field offices, will not only give financial advisors a 360-degree view, but also a tool that really becomes a hub, says Tabor. This ties all our systems together, giving a focal point for data entry and actionable activities. And at our home office, it will help us understand our relationship with the branch users to really understand the big picture.
23
PROFILED
REGNAN
egnan conducts research for institutional investors on environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) risks. Based in Sydney, the company evaluates the risk profiles of Australian companies largely through sources of public information, before feeding its conclusions to fund managers who use the research to make investment decisions. Regnan was formerly part of the Westpacowned BT Financial Group, where it relied on the groups infrastructure for its complex information gathering and storage needs. However, in early 2007 the company was spun off from its parent, forcing it to rebuild its IT environment from scratch at a new location. Sitting within BT Financial Groups IT environment was a very comfortable place for us, says Nicholas Brischetto, manager for corporate governance at Regnan. If we needed support, we just had to raise our hands and someone would show up within five minutes. We suddenly went from being surrounded by a complete, well-supported IT architecture to having just an office, five people and a telephone. However, Brischetto continues, there was an upside to the spin-off: We saw the spin-off as an opportunity to organise our research in a more structured manner and improve the way we interacted with our partners and clients, says Brischetto. The old system of organisation was ineffective. If I needed to get hold of a document with details of a past meeting with a company, I had to discover who had saved the document, and then get them to find it and send it to me. This was time-consuming and prone to error. Ultimately, we wanted to centralise our research knowledge and data and to integrate it with engagement activities triggered by our research results. Regnan approached a number of vendors to explore ideas for a new IT environment. Most vendor offerings did not fit well with Regnans plans, but one company suggested
that the latest CRM software from Microsoft could prove ideal. It recommended Brischetto get in touch with Microsoft Gold Certified Partner JayThom. Regnan engaged JayThom to install, integrate and host Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 for the new site. Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 gave Regnans staff access to the companys document libraries, e-mail accounts and CRM system through a single portal. JayThom sorted out everything we needed in about two weeks desktops, laptops, Internet access, e-mail, Dynamics CRM and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, says Brischetto. Rather than forcing everyone to work in a different way overnight, were introducing new features gradually so people get used to them. For instance, we have retained the old hierarchical folder system until staff become more familiar with using Office SharePoint document libraries. According to JayThoms managing director Brett Yorgey, the most crucial aspect of the project was the integration of Dynamics CRM with Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. The integration means Regnan now has one central repository where all its staff can view, access and act on the same data, he says. Since its all integrated, anyone can edit these documents within Microsoft Office Outlook, and some areas of it can be accessed through Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, adds Brischetto. Regnan pays a monthly fee to JayThom to host its new infrastructure, an approach that meant the company did not have to spend a lot of cash upfront to install its own server. The new integrated IT environment is transforming the way Regnan interacts with its clients and partners. A clear benefit has been the ability to organise research more effectively. For instance, Regnan can file documents within the CRM system under a variety of tags, which makes it much easier to locate its research. The ability to cross-
categorise companies and issues or even multiple issues has added flexibility to the way we file things, says Brischetto. The tagging mechanism in Dynamics CRM overcame the problem of important research documents or correspondence going missing for instance, due to staff forgetting where they were saved. The improved system of research organisation also means there is less chance of the wrong document being attached to an e-mail sent to clients. Because the technologies are integrated, research housed in the CRM system is easily accessed while the user is working in Microsoft applications such as Office Outlook. The Microsoft technology has also enabled Regnan to be more professional in its dealings with clients. In the past, when a client asked for research on a particular issue we had to collate information manually from different locations to pull together a report, says Brischetto. Generating reports is now much simpler and quicker. With a single click, staff can transfer a document from an incoming e-mail to a suitable location within the CRM system. Furthermore, each staff member now has instant access to a historical record of correspondence with every customer on any topic.
Anyone in Regnan can record their communication with clients centrally using the Track in CRM button located in each users e-mail folder, says Yorgey. So whoever takes the next call from that client is up to date with all past correspondence, and can respond in a well-informed way. The integrated Microsoft environment means we can accomplish our core work more quickly and professionally, says Brischetto. For an information business like ours, nothing could be more essential.
Solution Integrated Microsoft environment for knowledge and data storage and customer engagement Benefits Improved organisation; improved security; enhanced customer service; faster response Technologies Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Partner JayThom www.jaythom.com.au
25
PROFILED
REUTERS
ounded in 1851, Reuters is perhaps best known as the worlds largest international multimedia news agency, yet more than 90 per cent of its revenues come from its offerings for the financial services industry. In 2003 the company purchased Multex, a financial research and information service, and renamed it Reuters Research. Reuters Research then launched Reuters Knowledge, a Web-based financial information delivery system, which supplies real-time and historical equity, fixed income and economic research from the worlds leading analysts to investors all over the globe. Using SQL Server as a foundation for the system has provided the company with efficient data replication used for populating a secondary data centre, backup copies, and special-purpose clusters; high availability; trouble-free administration using SQL Server Enterprise Manager; and an easy upgrade path. When Reuters Knowledge was launched the company needed a system that would support its needs, which included: efficient data replication; high availability and disaster recoverability; easy administration to support the dynamic nature of the industry; upgradeability; and scalability. The solution, which was found in Microsoft SQL Server,
Solution Relational database management system Benefits Flawless replication; high availability and disaster recoverability; easy administration; upgradeability; scalability Technologies Microsoft SQL Server; Windows Server Partner Microsoft www.microsoft.com
provides the foundation of the Web-based environment that supports the Knowledge service. The financial research data gathered by Knowledge includes documents from more than 900 sources including the worlds leading brokerage firms, investment banks, market research, and independent research providers. The financial research historical database contains more than nine million fulltext reports covering over 25,000 companies that span 100 countries and 23 languages. As well as this the company fundamentals database contains information on about 50,000 companies, and the earnings estimates database has information on more than 25,000 companies. All of this financial data is stored on 231 unique databases with more than 500 instances of replicated databases, including backup and working copies. These databases are located on some 150 computers using SQL Server, with locally attached storage holding 25 terabytes. For the financial research documents, the SQL Server databases include pointers to the documents stored in PDF and other formats on file servers holding about ten terabytes of disk space. The basic multi-tier architecture of the system is replicated symmetrically (with specific exceptions) at the companys main data centre at 75 Park Place, New York, with its secondary data centre in Nutley, New Jersey. SQL Server has met the companys expectations and is providing a number of added benefits including flawless replication, and high availability and disaster recoverability. All components of the Reuters Knowledge service production infrastructure are designed with disaster recovery in mind. We guarantee up to 99.9 per cent availability for the interactive decision support systems, which is something considering the complexity of our environment with 150 servers running more than 700 instances of SQL Server databases, and terabytes of information, Meikson says. SQL Server has never let us down.
Prior to opening its data centre in Nutley, both of the companys data centres were in the financial district of Manhattan, with the primary data centre located a block away from the twin towers of the World Trade Center. When the World Trade Center was destroyed on 11 September 2001, Reuters Research lost power to both of its data centres. We couldnt even get access to the buildings for three days, says Meikson. When we finally got a generator into our secondary data centre on Williams Street, all we had to do on the SQL Server side was re-configure the backup SQL Servers as master SQL Servers and we were up and running again. It was unbelievable, and I say that because I have 20 years of experience as a database administrator working with DB/2, Sybase, and other products, and Ive experienced so many lesser disaster recovery efforts where things wouldnt come back up as they were supposed to. So we were all very pleased with the recovery capability of SQL Server. Two years later a major power outage affecting much of the US Northeast and Midwest, from New York to Canada, and as far east as Detroit, made headlines around the world. Again we saw the excellent recoverability of SQL Server, says Meikson. It is extremely resilient. Reuters Research is at the hub of a dynamic industry where agility is required to quickly respond to new market opportunities. Meiksons long experience as a database administrator made him keenly aware of the need for a database management system that was easy to administer something he has found with SQL Server and the SQL Server Enterprise Manager, which provides a Microsoft Management Console compliant user interface. Enterprise Manager provides a centralised workspace for managing all of our databases, Meikson says. The drag-and-drop functionality of the graphical user interface is extremely efficient and easy to work with. With other database products Ive worked
with I had to memorise long command line sequences. With Enterprise Manager you can just click away. It provides a nice and easy way to accomplish what you need to do.
27
PROFILED
THOMSON FINANCIAL
homson Financial provides information and technology solutions to the worldwide financial community. One of its most popular products is the Thomson Financial Portia, a portfolio management system, which is used daily by many customers to manage more than US$15 trillion in assets. Because Portia was written 20 years ago as a menu-driven system, tasks often required multiple steps and frequent human intervention. As the pace of financial markets has quickened, our customers dont have the time or patience to click through multiple menus to accomplish routine tasks such as running a report, explains Christy Bremner, global managing director of the Portia Business Unit at Thomson Financial. We wanted to support the optimisation of our customers workflows and let them customise the software to meet the needs of different users. By giving customers the ability to automate the many steps of tasks they perform, run them as a workflow, and customise workflows for different roles, Thomson Financial would help customers to be more efficient while it eliminated inaccuracies. The more things that humans need to do, the more opportunity
there is for error, which could expose the customer to financial loss, says Bremner. Chicago investment management firm Segall Bryant & Hamill uses Portia extensively. Portia is a powerful product, and weve used it since our companys inception in 1994, says Russ Martin, senior financial systems architect for the company. But its a little intimidating when you first encounter it. It doesnt follow the software standards that people are used to seeing today, such as toolbars and buttons. It took several weeks for new employees to become fluent in using Portia, and Martin found himself dealing with numerous support calls as even experienced users had trouble with infrequently used tasks such as importing portfolio data for new clients. Our portfolio administrators had to sit down with a paper manual and navigate very involved procedures, he says. It could take up to two hours to set up one new client. When we were looking at growing the business, this was a major obstacle. As a Microsoft partner, Thomson Financial used Microsoft technologies to refresh Portia, keeping its functionality while simplifying its use. When we saw the new workflow and presentation technologies built into Microsofts
latest development environment, we realised how much faster we could do this job than even a year ago, says Bremner. It would have taken us five times longer to do this job using other technologies. It took just six months to create Portia Workspace, the new graphical, workflowenabled interface to Portia. Now, customers can easily automate the features and functions that they use on a regular basis. They can add buttons for tasks such as adding a transaction, security, or switching between applications, and can then use these buttons to move quickly through the old menu system. To create a workflow, users simply link buttons, and the software automates both the human and system steps, such as running a nightly transaction batch. Investment firms can configure the workspace for particular categories of users, and individual users can further configure their desktops to their needs. Operations staff use the new software to easily monitor system activities such as process and workflow performance. A diverse group of people with very different needs use this software in our organisation, explains Martin. Its very useful for them to customise Portia Workspace to do their individual jobs better. As we grow our business, we have to make our current staff as efficient as we can. The previous two-hour process of setting up a new client should now take just 30 minutes or less. This is the kind of efficiency gain that will allow us to easily handle growth. Martin estimates that users will be up and running within a week, versus the three to four weeks currently required. Using the new software, our users should be able to automate many steps that used to require their involvement, he says. Martin and his staff will also be able to reduce development time on new projects. We write a lot of custom software to create reports and other financial tools, which often needs to pull information from Portia, he says. Now, our
developers can take advantage of the automated workflows to simplify coding efforts. As one of the companys central information systems, the accuracy of Portias data has a tremendous impact on the business as a whole, Martin says. A seemingly minor mistake can affect everyone from portfolio managers to operations staff and can lead to trading errors, incorrect portfolio returns, or even the need to regenerate client statements. With such high stakes, we do everything we can to ensure data accuracy. With this new software, we have a very effective tool in meeting these demands.With existing customers such as Segall Bryant & Hamill eagerly embracing the new efficiencies they are discovering with Portia Workspace, Thomson Financial is busy winning new customers with the software. Portia Workspace is helping us win new business because of its innovative approach to optimising user experience, says Bremner. People want to use Portia. Weve increased our pipeline of new leads and are more competitive. Nothing else on the market comes close to this products ability to customise workflows.
Solution Refresh of Thomson Financial Portia portfolio management system Benefits Increased productivity from automated workflows; increased data accuracy; new business from more competitive products Technologies Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0; BizTalk Server 2006; SQL Server 2005; Visual Studio 2005; Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition Partner Thomson Financial www.thomson.com/financial
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PROFILED
XENOMORPH
enomorph delivers real-time analytics and data management solutions to financial markets. With offices in London and New York, its customers are investment banks, hedge funds and asset management institutions across the worlds financial centres. They use Xenomorphs sophisticated TimeScape technology, a realtime analytics and data management suite, to accelerate trading decisions and reduce risk. This technology manages growing volumes of increasingly complex data within trading and risk management, making it immediately available wherever and however they wish to analyse it. In order to meet the industrys extensive performance needs in the management and analysis of market data, Timescape was built on proprietary time-series database technology. But today, financial technology vendors such as Xenomorph are experiencing a push from their customers to provide solutions on standards-based systems. Often, the knowledge within IT departments is based on standards, and this type of technology is easier for them to manage. The management tools that come with database systems such as Microsoft SQL Server are very mature, says Brian Sentance, chief executive officer at Xenomorph. IT teams are looking to avoid proprietary systems that require them to learn a new set of technologies. To meet customer expectations, Xenomorph sought to find a way to deliver the same high performance and speed of execution associated with its specialist database systems using standards-based technology. Working closely with the Microsoft Developer and Partner Evangelist team, Xenomorph chose to develop TimeScape on Microsoft SQL Server 2005 database software and transfer the solution to SQL Server 2008 in time for its release. The technologies within SQL Server made it possible to extend the databases
performance to trading data standards. SQL Server hosts the Microsoft .NET Framework Common Language Runtime (CLR) and this helps to ensure that programmers can work more efficiently by using an enhanced database programming model. Xenomorph is confident that the TimeScape solution running on SQL Server 2008 offers more than just the high performance traders, risk managers and IT staff require. The new features in SQL Server 2008 also provide extensive database management functionality, expected to increase productivity within IT departments, as well as advanced features that help the business to comply with strict data transparency regulations. Even before the products release on SQL Server, Xenomorph customers have expressed significant interest in the solution, which has the potential to reverse preconceptions of standards-based databases in the financial industry. Not only can we effectively host our database inside SQL Server, it becomes a very high performance repository for time-ordered, time-series data, says Sentance. It means the data is exposed in a manner that our customers are familiar with and can easily manage in-house, which is something that would be more difficult with competitor solutions. To prove its performance levels, Xenomorph and Microsoft conducted tests to benchmark the SQL Server 2008 solution on databases of up to 8.5 terabytes of market data, numbering half a trillion individual ticks of data. Sentance explains: With data volumes rising, we need to come to market with credible figures to gain the confidence of the industry and our existing customers. A database that handles half a trillion ticks is large enough to meet many of our customers needs and we are confident that they will be impressed by the solution were offering on SQL Server 2008. Our customers want very clear
information about the performance of our solution, and in this regard we decided for this first benchmark to test random access to tick data physically stored on disk and not held in memory. We aimed for time-series performance that was at least an order of magnitude better than traditional row-based solutions and comparable to our existing proprietary database solution. I am pleased to say we achieved this with our SQL Server 2008 implementation, which additionally offered very low levels of contention for multiuser access, and no material degradation of performance with increasing database size. Xenomorph clients have already expressed significant enthusiasm for the TimeScape solution based on SQL Server 2008. Almost every client and prospect that we mention it to says theyd like to move away from proprietary solutions towards a standardsbased approach, says Sentance. Theyre extremely keen to work with the SQL Server 2008 solution, and our results show that in no way is performance compromised. Users such as traders and the risk
managers will still see the same financial instruments, performance levels and execution speeds to which theyre accustomed, but customers IT teams can expect to experience a significant difference. The standards-based technology helps to ensure that company administrators can now handle management of the database without having to rely on specialist development teams. Our clients feel that their developers will be able to spend more time focusing on value-added activities, such as creating more advanced user functionality, says Sentance.
Solution Standards-based solution, relational database management system, high performance data repository Benefits Enhanced performance; simplified management; increased productivity; reduced operational risk; compliance needs met Technologies Microsoft .NET Framework, Office Excel 2007, Office SharePoint Server 2007, SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2008 Partner Microsoft www.microsoft.com
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DIRECTORY COMPANIES A-Z
Altaira
Trading/Portfolio Risk division 4422 South Century Drive Murray UT 84123-2513 USA Blaise Labriola, Managing Director Tel: +1 801 288 8928 bflabriola@altairallc.com www.altairallc.com Altaira is the premier cross-asset portfolio system for front-to-middle trading and risk-management. Using tools like C# for rapid application development, Microsoft .NET for a rich client interface, grid computing for unlimited scalability, and Web services for both crossplatform interoperability and extensibility, Altaira provides both the system and the flexibility to customise it to meet the needs of todays competitive markets. Designed by traders for traders, Altaira software has a number of features, which include job management services, deal pricing services and management services. All operate on Microsoft XP or Vista and integrate with multiple formats to make for the best overall portfolio and risk management solution currently available for the high-end enterprise, the individual trader, and everything in between.
Asset Control
Crystal Tower 20th Floor Orlyplein 10 1043 DP Amsterdam The Netherlands Tel: +31 20 580 6900 Fax: +31 20 580 6999 info@asset-control.com www.asset-control.com EMEA contact: Claudio Capozzi, EMEA Sales Director Tel: +44 (0) 20 7743 0320 ccapozzi@asset-control.com US contact: John Mitchell, North America Sales Director Tel: +1 646 673 8886 jmitchell@asset-control.com APAC contact: Alex Rich, Asia Pacific Sales Director Tel: +65 6248 4677 arich@asset-control.com Asset Control provides centralised data management solutions for financial institutions worldwide. From business-entity to firm-wide projects, the company offers strategic reference and market data platforms that deliver the accuracy, consistency and relevancy firms need to reduce costs and risk, manage evolving compliance needs, and accelerate the delivery of new products and services. Asset Control has helped some of the worlds most successful financial institutions optimise their data infrastructures, enhance decision-making, and reduce complexity.
Case study: Linedata Risk Analytics
Case study: Multinational Investment Company uses TAPMaster
Avanade
818 Stewart St. Suite 400 Seattle WA 98101 USA Tel: +1 206 239 5600 Fax: +1 206 239 5605 info@avanade.com www.avanade.com Avanade is a global IT consultancy dedicated to using the Microsoft platform to help enterprises achieve profitable growth. Through proven solutions that extend Microsoft technologies, the company helps enterprises increase revenue, reduce costs and reinvest in innovation to gain a competitive advantage. Avanade consultants deliver value according to each customers requirements, timeline and budget by combining insight, innovation and the talent of a global workforce. Avanade has helped leading organisations across the capital markets space implement critical business systems in sectors including wealth management, asset management, exchanges, clearing, risk management, and brokerage. Its solutions span the breadth of the Microsoft platform and products including Avanades Enterprise CRM for wealth management, business intelligence solutions, and ACA, the Avanade Connected Architectures, to streamline software development.
BlueThread Technologies
2232 South Main Street Ann Arbor MI 48103 USA Mark Brazeau, Principal Tel: +1 734 761 6543 Fax: +1 734 996 5506 mbrazeau@bluethreadinc.com www.bluethreadinc.com BlueThread is an enterprise content management (ECM) solution provider, which offers measurable business benefits. Its EMC framework offers world-class benefits by delivering a low risk and dramatically lower cost-ofownership alternative, based on and supported by Microsoft SharePoint. Serving as the core of this platform, SharePoint provides highly-scalable ECM repository and library services capabilities that can manage content of all types as well as their related lifecycles while K2 blackpearl adds robust workflow/business process management capabilities. BlueThreads SmartDesk delivers this best-of-breed ECM platform to work processors via an intelligent and intuitive end-user application experience that surfaces only specific content and processing tools required to process work. SmartDesk dynamically gathers, sorts, and presents only the specific content (images, pdfs, Word documents, and line-of-business data) and contextual toolbars based upon a specific participant, work type and workflow step. Unlike other generic ECM systems, it frees the user from organisational tasks, duplicate data entry, extraneous data and unnecessary controls, and delivers work and supporting content to executives, managers and knowledge workers in a highly-optimised user experience.
Case study: London Stock Exchange
Case study: Raymond James
33
COMPANIES A-Z
Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc.

1981 Marcus Avenue Lake Success NY 11042 USA Arlene Driscoll, VP, Marketing Tel: +1 888 237 1900 info@broadridge.com www.broadridge.com EMEA and APAC contact: Mike West, VP, Marketing Tel: +44 (0) 20 7551 3000 mike.west@broadridge.com With more than 40 years of experience, Broadridge is a leading provider of technology-based outsourcing solutions to the financial services industry, offering the most comprehensive range of fully-integrated solutions to meet the operational needs of banks and broker/dealers worldwide. Broadridge offers solutions to support the entire investment lifecycle, including solutions for investor communications, global securities processing, and securities clearing and operations outsourcing solutions. It offers advanced systems and services that are dependable, scalable, and cost-efficient. Outsourcing to Broadridge enables its clients to reduce their capital investments in operations infrastructure, thereby allowing them to increase their focus on core business activities.
ClusterSeven
10 Fashion Street London E1 6PX UK Henry Umney, VP, Sales Tel: +44 (0) 20 7426 1000 humney@clusterseven.com www.clusterseven.com US contact: Richard Dodd, VP, Americas Tel: +1 212 858 7790 rdodd@clusterseven.com ClusterSevens software non-intrusively monitors and tracks spreadsheets to enable users to more effectively manage governance, risk and regulatory compliance obligations in order to generate revenue, enhance staff efficiency and boost productivity. ClusterSeven monitors spreadsheet activity down to a cell level whether the documents are held within a file server environment or a content repository (Microsoft SharePoint 2007 recommended). ClusterSeven is compatible with all versions of Excel from 97 to 2007 and all data is stored in a SQL Server 2005 or 2008 database.
Case study: clusterseven.com
Comprehensive Software Systems

25178 Genesee Trail Road Golden CO 80401 USA Faye Woodley, Senior Manager, Business Development Tel: +1 303 876 1500 Fax: +1 303 526 9362 faye.woodley@csssoftware.com www.csssoftware.com Comprehensive Software Systems (CSS) is a client-centric software development company that provides full enterprise and point solution offerings to the financial services industry. It works to understand its clients specific needs and challenges and offer them innovative software and services for their front-to-back-office processing needs. As an alternative to mainframe technology, CSS has the ability to rapidly adapt to market demands, client needs, and regulatory initiatives and offers its clients full access to business data in real time all day, every day. Its solutions function either as an enterprise solution or as a stand-alone point solution that seamlessly integrates into a firms existing system to gain momentum with a new competitive advantage.
Coral8
82 Pioneer Way Suite 106 Mountain View CA 94041 USA Colin Clark, EVP, Financial Services Tel: +1 650 210 3810 Fax: +1 650 210 3811 cclark@coral8.com www.coral8.com Coral8's next generation Complex Event Processing platform enables quick creation and deployment of live analytic applications that provide up-to-the-minute business intelligence to help users make better decisions faster and take appropriate actions that can lead to positive impact on their businesses. Coral8 can help its customers build systems for: Real-time profit and loss Real-time market data analytics Risk management systems Smart order routing and execution management Order and liquidity analysis Quantitative trading and signal generation Surveillance and compliance. All solutions leverage many Microsoft products that include SQL Server, SharePoint, Windows, Windows XP and Microsoft BI products. Coral8 also provides a .NET API, allowing customers to integrate complex event processing into line of business applications.
Case study: csssoftware.com
Case study: coral8.com
35
COMPANIES A-Z
Digipede Technologies
6114 La Salle Avenue 302 Oakland CA 94611 USA John Powers, CEO Tel: +1 510 834 3645 Fax: +1 510 834 8632 john@digipede.net www.digipede.net Digipede Technologies delivers grid computing software that dramatically improves the performance of financial applications by distributing execution across a network of Windows machines. Digipede helps its financial customers gain a competitive advantage by accelerating compute and transaction-intensive applications in risk management, correlation analysis, portfolio optimisation, algorithmic trading, and more. Featuring the critically acclaimed Digipede Framework SDK, the Digipede Network is designed to be easier to deploy and use than competing grid computing solutions. The company has integrated its grid computing software with key elements of the Microsoft technology stack, including .NET, Visual Studio, Windows Server (including Windows HPC Server 2008), Excel, and Excel Services.
Doculabs
200 W. Monroe Suite 2050 Chicago IL 60606 USA Tel: +1 312 433 7793 Fax: +1 312 433 7795 www.doculabs.com EMEA and US contact: Rick Tucker, Director of Business Development Tel: +1 312 881 1640 rtucker@doculabs.com APAC contact: Jeetu Patel, EVP Tel: +1 312 881 1617 jpatel@doculabs.com Doculabs is a consulting firm that helps organisations develop sound technology strategies for content- and process-related applications such as Office and SharePoint. Its engagements focus on helping clients leverage their existing enterprise content management (ECM) investments on a broader enterprise basis through objective analysis and in-depth market knowledge. This approach is based on the companys fundamental belief that in order to protect a clients long-term interest, technology advisors should not be implementers. Doculabs helps capital markets clients deliver on their technology objectives through engagements that address ECM opportunities such as strategic planning, information compliance, e-discovery, and digitisation for outsourcing. Through more than a thousand consulting engagements for organisations facing technology-, compliance-, and process-related challenges, its proven approach has provided its clients with the information and advice they need to make confident and wellinformed decisions.
Case study: III Offshore Advisors
Case study: doculabs.com
Finsbury Solutions
Winchester House 259-269 Old Marylebone Road London NW1 5RA UK Jeremy Wood, Director Tel: +44 (0) 20 7170 4075 jeremy.wood@finsburysolutions.com www.finsburysolutions.com Spreadsheet Workbench from Finsbury Solutions is a leading spreadsheet management and compliance solution based on Microsoft SharePoint. It helps financial organisations address the issues of risk, audit, version control and compliance that are inherent with the use of business critical spreadsheet applications. In addition it provides a spreadsheet framework designed to improve the operational efficiency of spreadsheet based business processes. Key areas of its use include: Finance Risk and audit Product control Trading Regulatory and compliance (Sarbanes-Oxley). The product is based on core Microsoft technologies. These include SharePoint 2007 and SQL Server 2005/8, Windows Server, Office and Windows Workflow Foundation for advanced authorisation, workflow and business process capabilities.
GigaSpaces Technologies
317 Madison Ave Suite 1220 New York NY 10017 USA John Giubileo, EVP and General Manager, Americas Tel: +1 646 421 2830 Fax: +1 646 421 2859 sales@gigaspaces.com www.gigaspaces.com EMEA contact: Edu Meytal, General Manager, International Operations Tel: +972 9 952 6751 APAC contact: Greg Lenehan, APAC Regional Director Tel: +65 9618 6151 GigaSpaces Technologies is a leading provider of a new generation of application platforms for Java and .NET environments that offer an alternative to traditional application-servers. The company's eXtreme Application Platform allows businesses and developers to predictably scale systems under any peak demand, guarantee performance under any data processing load, and seamlessly leverage the economies-of-scale offered by virtual computing environments such as clouds and grids. GigaSpaces customers include six of the world's top ten investment banks, world-leading exchanges, market data providers, hedge funds, retail banks, leading telecommunications and mobile carriers, global Webcommerce companies, five of the world's top online gaming companies, and leading Internet media organisations.
Case study: Kohlberg Kravis Roberts
Case studies: Monte Paschi Group Energy Trading Industry
37
COMPANIES A-Z
Information Management Group

Harmsworth House 13-15 Bouverie Street London EC4Y 8DP UK Garry Miller, Business Development Director Tel: +44 (0) 20 7842 7800 Fax: +44 (0) 20 7842 7801 info@imgroup.com www.imgroup.com Information Management Group (IMGroup) is committed to delivering innovative business intelligence, information management, CRM, portal and collaboration solutions. The IMGroup Institutional Client Platform is a highly sophisticated client management application which leverages the very latest technologies, including SharePoint, SQL Server and Microsoft CRM, to provide a highly cost-effective solution. Data mining, predictive analytics and business intelligence are surfaced through a collaborative portal framework and integrated with telephony systems to provide a real-time customer system, which provides highly relevant point-of-contact information and has increased sales performance in one of the worlds largest banks by a factor of five times.
Impendium Systems
Financial services division The Smith Centre The Fairmile Henley-on-Thames Oxfordshire RG9 6AB UK Andrew Murray, Business Development Tel: +44 (0) 1491 416 600 Fax: +44 (0) 1491 416 601 andrew.murray@impendiumsystems.com www.impendiumsystems.com US contact: Stuart Clark, Business Development Tel: +1 617 457 5200 APAC contact: Business Development Tel: +61 280 049 600 Created in 2005, Impendium Systems is a capital markets and treasury specialist, which provides highly automated operational processing applications developed on Microsoft technologies. Its applications include: Revenue Recovery; Market Claims; Fails Management; and Trade Exceptions. They offer real-time operational risk and customer information, automated exception handling, and audit transparency for capital markets, investment management and treasury organisations. Located in the UK, US and Asia Pacific, the company offers global coverage to a number of investment banks, global custodians, fund managers and corporate treasuries.
Case study: imgroup.com
Case study: Global Investment Bank
Infusion Development
291 Broadway 13th Floor New York NY 10007 USA Christian Schneider, COO Tel: +1 212 732 6100 Fax: +1 212 732 3335 cschneider@infusion.com www.infusion.com EMEA contact: Bryan Shiffman, Director Tel: +44 (0) 207 936 1620 bshiffman@infusion.com APAC contact: Cortez La Palme, General Manager Tel: +971 50 354 0172 clapalme@infusion.com Infusion Development is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner that applies emerging technologies to solve complex software problems. Its international offices in New York, London, Toronto, Boston, and Dubai offer a full suite of information technology services with a focus on talent, technology, and design-driven methodologies, placing Infusion at the forefront of application and interface exploration. Infusion has implemented solutions for many of the worlds largest organisations in the financial services, travel and tourism, healthcare, technology, and government sectors. Infusions proprietary and Microsoft emerging technology solutions are implemented around the world by its team of over 200 full-time consultants.
IPC Systems
3 Second Street Jersey City NJ 07311 USA Tel: +1 201 253 2000 Fax: +1 201 253 2361 www.ipc.com US contact: Len Bontempi, VP/Managing Director, Americas Tel: +1 212 858 7867 len.bontempi@ipc.com EMEA contact: Kevin Acott, Managing Director, EMEA Tel: +44 (0) 20 7979 7221 kevin.acott@ipc.com APAC contact: David Dodd, Managing Director, Asia Pacific Tel: +852 2899 8028 david.dodd@ipc.com IPC is a leading provider of indispensable financial trading communications solutions to the worlds largest financial services firms and global enterprises. With 35 years of expertise and product innovation, IPC provides its customers with global systems and solutions, as well as a suite of products and enhanced services that include advanced Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and an integrated network with 24/7, 365 day management services for more than 40 countries. The company produces a number of IPC solutions, which utilise Microsoft Windows, including: Enterprise Administration Server; Enterprise Hoot Intercom; Total Circuit Management; Voice Recording Systems; IQ/Impact; and Proteus Trader. Based in Jersey City, New Jersey, IPC has approximately 1,000 employees throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific regions.
39
COMPANIES A-Z
K2
EMEA divison 26 Worple Road Wimbledon London SW19 4EE UK Ruan Scott, VP, EMEA division Tel: +44 (0) 20 8971 3450 Fax: +44 (0) 20 8946 8844 ruan@k2.com www.k2.com US contact: Glen Bryant, VP, US division Tel: +1 425 883 4200 glen@k2.com APAC contact: Weng Him Koh, VP, APAC division Tel: +65 6327 4110 wenghim@k2.com K2 is a platform for building process-driven applications that improve business efficiency. Its applications are flexible and scalable and can span employees, departments, organisations and line-of-business systems. All applications are built on .NET and leverage existing investments in Microsoft software infrastructure Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, InfoPath, Visio, Visual Studio, Office, Exchange, BizTalk and Office Communications Server. K2 solutions are deployed by a growing number of the global Fortune 100. The company is a division of SourceCode Technology Holdings, based in Redmond, Washington, and has offices all over the world.
Kynetix Technology Group

Token House 12 Tokenhouse Yard London EC2R 7AS Matt Dolton, Client Services Director Tel: +44 (0) 20 7836 1800 Fax: +44 (0) 20 7836 1801 matt.dolton@kyntex.com www.kynetix.com Kynetix partners with UK capital market firms to enable its customers to concentrate on their core competencies, build valuable client relationships and focus on profits. The companys key differentiator is its ability to deliver purpose-built solutions quickly, using its specialist financial services insight. Kynetix can fix inflexible, home-grown, or out-of-date packaged applications by rapidly building and implementing software solutions incorporating Microsoft Dynamics CRM, BizTalk Server, Office SharePoint Server, SQL Server and Excel Services. As a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, it has the capabilities to provide flexible, rapidly delivered, integrated solutions that provide its customers with a competitive advantage.
Case study: Ai Claims Solutions
Linedata Services
260 Franklin Street Boston MA 02110 USA Annie Morris, Managing Director Tel: +1 617 912 4700 Fax: +1 617 912 4801 annie.morris@na.linedata.com www.ldsam.com EMEA contact: Simon Bennett, Director of Sales Tel: +44 (0) 20 7360 1800 uksales@ldsam.com APAC contact: Marie Christine Merkly, Director of Sales Tel: +852 3583 7900 hkinfo@bft.linedata.com Linedata Services is a global technology leader for investment software, solutions and support. Linedata Services Asset Management division provides comprehensive, scalable solutions to the buy-side, from pre-trade to post-settlement, with hundreds of clients at more than 1,000 sites and 13,000 users in 40 countries. Linedata is unique in offering a full front- to back-office solution via enterprise installation, or as an application service provider (ASP), and has 20 years of experience delivering hosted and ASP solutions that now have SQL Server and Windows Communication Foundation at their core. Linedatas LongView Live, an intuitive, jetfighter-like interface for its LongView Trading Order Management System (OMS) is built on Windows Presentation Foundation. Linedata is also on the latest version of .NET and is fully certified on Vista and Windows Server 2008.
Misys
123 Main Street 8th Floor White Plains, New York 10601 USA David Stewart, Product Manager Jessica Buhl, Product Marketing Manager Tel: +1 914 428 7200 Fax: +1 914 428 0795 David.Stewart@misys.com jessica.buhl@misys.com www.misysbanking.com Misys Opics Plus is a .NET service oriented, front to back office, core treasury, capital markets and derivatives solution. On a single platform, it processes vanilla and complex derivatives, fixed income, equity and treasury trades. Opics Plus delivers optimal performance and functionality with Microsoft endorsed architecture, enabling multi-tiered and parallel processing. As an extension of the Opics Plus offering, the Opics Plus Middle Office Suite provides a single integration of Opics Plus, Opics Risk Plus and Eagleye for Opics Plus. The Middle Office Suite creates an environment of protection by performing sensitivity analysis, scenario analysis and cash flow forecasting while calculating VaR (Parametric, Monte Carlo and Historical Simulation), performance measurement and attribution. Measurements can be monitored against user-defined limits in real-time. Notifications of limit breaches are available via email, SMS or alerts. The Middle Office Suite calculates hedging recommendations that can be leveraged both internally and externally. Misys is a Microsoft Key Capital Markets Partner Solutions provider and Microsoft Global Independent Software Vendor in the Financial Services industry vertical. Opics Plus was awarded the 2006 Windows In Financial Services Innovator Award for Treasury & Capital Markets.
Case study: SunTrust
41
COMPANIES A-Z
Murex
8 rue Bellini 75782 Paris Cedex 16 France Tel: +33 1 44 05 32 00 Fax: +33 1 44 05 32 10 info@murex.com www.murex.com EMEA contact: +33 1 4405 3200 US contact: +1 212 381 4300 APAC contact: +65 6216 0288 Building on over 22 years of experience in capital markets, Murex has developed an unmatched competence in the design and implementation of integrated trading, risk management and processing solution for the worlds top financial institutions, hedge funds, asset management companies and corporations. Featuring leading functionality in each asset class, MX.3 offers unrivalled product coverage of interest rate, foreign exchange, equity, credit and commodity instruments whether vanilla, structured or derivative. The solution benefits from an architecture design focusing on robustness, low cost of operation, and evolution. Murex services are readily compatible with the Microsoft .NET environments.
Netik
40 Fulton Street 11th Floor New York NY 10038 USA Doug Jeffrey, NA Sales Director Tel: +1 212 267 8800 Fax: +1 212 267 5057 nasales@netik.com www.netik.com EMEA contact: Keith Hale, EMEA Sales Director Tel: +44 (0) 20 7293 8400 emeasales@netik.com APAC contact: Ed Cresswell, Sales Executive Tel: +971 509 193 426 emeasales@netik.com Netik is a leading global provider of financial data management services and products to the securities industry. Netiks data management products include: Netik Global Securities Master; Netik GSM, a reference data managed service; Netik InterView, a data warehouse for the storage of holistic financial data; and Netik Information Portal to visualise data and sit at the heart of investment operations at many of the worlds leading asset managers, hedge funds, wealth managers, private bankers, prime brokers, fund administrators, custodians, investment operational outsourcing providers and investment banks. Netiks InterView and Information Portal solutions take full advantage of the Microsoft SQL platform, incorporating reporting services, analysis services and integration services.
Case study: Daiwa Securities Global Asset Services
New Access
13 avenue des Morgines 1213 Geneva Switzerland Tel: +41 228 799 911 Fax: +41 228 799 920 info@newaccess.ch www.newaccess.ch EMEA contact: Loredana Sabbagh, VP Marketing and Communication Tel: +41 228 799 917 loredana.sabbagh@newaccess.ch APAC contact: Steve Chu, Managing Director Tel: +65 6271 2872 info@newaccess.sg New Access SA, referencing EFG Bank, ING Bank and Banque Safdi amongst its prestigious clients, is a leader in the banking software industry in the following fields: Branch is a powerful integrated platform for client acquisition and relationship management, and allows for customisable features; seamless integration with transaction systems; and security-proof control. It also has the ability to connect with existing banking applications to act as a portal to the front office, and/or to provide its own components for client relationship management, portfolio and document functionalities Logical Access Suite is specifically developed for the banking industry. This electronic document management system provides for the administration, acquisition, workflow and documents classification in a variety of formats Olivia is a complete portfolio management system for asset managers Xeres produces any document in a high-quality looking format. This includes reports, legal forms and documents to be filled in and signed by clients. The Microsoft technology used in New Access banking solutions include: .NET; C#; SQL Server; and Visual Basic. .
Pendo Systems
60 Park Avenue 20th Floor Newark NJ 07102 USA David Coad, Director of Sales Tel: +1 646 873 7732 Fax: +1 646 346 7464 david.coad@pendosystems.com www.pendosystems.com EMEA contact: Pamela Pecs Cytron, CEO Tel: +1 646 873 7732 pamela@pendosystems.com Pendo Systems is a premier provider of software solutions for global financial institutions. Pendo Systems core product, BasisPoint, is a global enterprise-grade investment accounting engine that is rapidly becoming the new standard in investment accounting system delivery. The BasisPoint software is Microsoft-based, including Windows 2003 Server and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 systems, and features a unique, sophisticated functionality that provides powerful processing and the flexibility to support complex investment strategies. BasisPoint has an enterprise architecture that follows standards for interoperability and portability for applications, data transfer and remote system access. Alongside Microsofts SQL Server 2005, which allows for ease of integration, enhanced performance and scalability, BasisPoint provides enhanced navigation that leverages Microsofts .NET framework to extend and enhance its feature-set to the customer.
43
COMPANIES A-Z
Portrait Software
The Smith Centre The Fairmile Henley-on-Thames Oxfordshire RG9 6AB UK Paul Frederick, EVP, Global Business Development Tel: +44 (0) 1491 416 600 Fax: +44 (0) 1491 416 601 paul.frederick@portraitsoftware.com www.portraitsoftware.com EMEA contact: Neil Skilling, EMEA Sales Director Tel: +44 (0) 1312 403 106 neil.skilling@portraitsoftware.com US contact: Mark Smith, EVP Sales and Marketing Tel: +1 617 457 5225 mark.smith@portraitsoftware.com APAC contact: Chris Lowther, General Manager Tel: +64 21 453 663 chris.lowther@portraitsoftware.com Portrait Software empowers business-to-consumer enterprises to drive sales, reduce attrition and optimise marketing spend with next-generation marketing accelerators for Microsoft and legacy customer relationship management (CRM). Portraits Always-On-Marketing suite integrates advanced analytics with powerful, event-driven marketing automation to engage each customer individually in profitable, two-way, intelligent dialog via any channel of interaction. Portraits suite is a .NET solution, which extends Microsoft CRM to accelerate cross-selling during inbound and outbound interactions by infusing automated bestnext-action (BNA) decision-making into Microsoft CRM screens.
Protgsoft
1 North Bridge Road 19-04 High Street Centre 179094 Singapore Kumaran Pillai, CEO Tel: + 65 6584 3994 kumaran@protegesoft.com www.protegesoft.com Protgsoft works to solve the needs of investors by providing financial visualisation solutions to better manage their portfolios. Its applications exploit the latest technology available to deliver the most innovative solutions that help its clients improve their business performance. Portfolio Builder is an enterprise-oriented platform for financial planning, portfolio and risk management for wealth management applications in a Web 2.0 environment. Customers can dynamically construct and rebalance portfolios, as well as set alerts to notify users when the risk deviation exceeds acceptable levels. These capabilities result in portfolios that are risk adjusted and helps investors to achieve optimal investment performance. Key benefits of the solution stack include: Optimised investment portfolios resulting in consistent above average returns Lower unit costs for portfolio monitoring and rebalancing achieving more than 1,000 per cent productivity gains Multiple-account rebalancing enables banks and financial institutions to serve the mass-retail market effectively.
Case study: www.protegesoft.com
Case study: Merrill Lynch
Pyxis Mobile
1601 Trapelo Road Suite 260 Waltham MA 02451 USA Christopher Willis, EVP, Marketing Tel: +1 781 997 0300 cwillis@pyxismobile.com www.pyxismobile.com Pyxis Mobile is a leading provider of wireless applications that meet the diverse needs of the financial services and insurance industries. Pyxis Mobiles solutions are used by mobile financial professionals to assist in asset growth, portfolio management, customer and field service, and IT support. To date, Pyxis Mobile applications are in use at 28 of the top 50 global asset managers, 15 of the top 25 insurance carriers, and three of the top five US banks. Pyxis Mobiles customer list includes such companies as AIM, Blackstone Group, Deutsche Asset Management, Pioneer, Manulife, New York Life Investment, AXA Financial, Henderson Global, Sun Life Financial, and OppenheimerFunds.
Rapid Addition
International House 1-6 Yarmouth Place London W1J 7BU UK Toby Corballis, CEO +44 (0) 20 7993 9906 toby.corballis@rapidaddition.co.uk www.rapidaddition.com Rapid Addition provides leading edge products and services to the financial services industry based on the FIX protocol for the Microsoft platform, which are employed by brokers, investment managers, and some of the worlds leading exchanges. Its products include high-performance FIX engines, workflow enablement of FIX via integration with Microsofts BizTalk Server, an Internet-based Web-Dealer platform, and Algo-strategies editor. ShortCut, the companys FIX enablement of BizTalk, comprises a FIX adaptor, and a series of FIX-to-FIXML pipelines and schemas that can be used and modified by clients to support extensions to application messages. It enables organisations to rapidly FIX-enable their pre- and post-trade workflow and can be used to map between the different versions. Additional features include the ability to set up a FIX message routing hub using out-of-the-box with no additional coding, handle EMX messages, map between protocols, and support the transparency and trade reporting requirements of MiFid, RegNMS and other legislation.
45
COMPANIES A-Z
Rule Financial
101 Moorgate London EC2M 6SL UK Tel: +44 (0) 20 7826 4444 Fax: +44 (0) 20 7826 4440 marketing@rulefinancial.com www.rulefinancial.com Rule Financial is a leading UK independent provider of business consulting, IT services and bespoke technology to the banking and investment communities. Employing over 230 staff at its London headquarters and near-shore development facilities in Spain and Poland, the company counts the worlds foremost financial institutions among its clients. Exceptional people, rigorous standards and over a decade of hard-won experience have given the company a strong competitive edge in this constantly changing market. Rule has extensive experience developing robust capital markets solutions using Microsoft technologies. It works closely with Microsoft to ensure its solutions follow best practices and maximise their technology potential. Rule has developed a bespoke line of business applications ranging from highly flexible Web-based solutions, to smart clients with rich functionality. Its consultants have extensive experience across the breadth of Microsoft product offerings including the .NET Framework, ASP.NET, Visual Studio, WPF, Silverlight, C++, SharePoint, Excel and SQL Server.
ScaleOut Software
10900 NE 8th Street Suite 900 Bellevue WA 98004 USA Dan McMillan, VP, Sales Tel: +1 503 643 3422 Fax: +1 509 753 9460 danm@scaleoutsoftware.com www.scaleoutsoftware.com EMEA and APAC contact: David Brinker, COO Tel: +1 503 643 3422 daveb@scaleoutsoftware.com ScaleOut Softwares data grid solutions drive the next generation of application performance for grid computing. Its Windows-native distributed caching spans the cluster to provide grid applications with fast, inmemory data access for high performance. Advanced features for grid-based applications, such as parallel data query and method invocation, extend the power of distributed caching to simplify program structure and shorten design cycles. ScaleOut StateServers unique, highly integrated and self-managing design makes distributed caching easy-to-deploy and use.
Singularity
Capital Markets division 100 Patrick Street Derry BT48 7EL Northern Ireland Philip Mills, Account Manager Tel: +44 (0) 20 7826 4470 Fax: +44 (0) 20 7826 4480 sales@singularity.co.uk www.singularity.co.uk US contact: Nino Stimac, Account Manager Tel: +1 212 203 9360 sales@singularity.co.uk APAC contact: Andy Lim, Account Manager Tel: +65 9616 7732 sales@singularity.co.uk Singularity provides business process agility software and services that equip financial market businesses to streamline operations, realise efficiencies, and increase effectiveness. Over 100 financial institutions globally rely on Singularity to deliver process agility and efficiency. In the front-office it improves efficiency and effectiveness of people-intensive processes such as on-boarding a new customer, handling a customer subscription or redemption, or dealing with a customer complaint. In the back-office it improves straight through processing rates while equipping people to handle exceptions efficiently and flexibly. Singularitys business process management software, the Singularity Process Platform, equips companies for rapid process automation. The platform is built on Microsoft technologies, including MSOffice, SharePoint, Dynamics CRM and BizTalk.
SunGard
Capital Markets & Investment Banking division 25 Canada Square London E14 5LQ UK Jane Boorman, Head of Strategic Alliances and Business Development Tel: +44 (0) 20 8081 2779 jane.boorman@sungard.com www.sungard.com SunGard provides solutions for todays investment banker. Whether its controlling the cost of trading or organising settlements, theres a SunGard solution for every kind of investment banking. SunGards capital markets and investment banking solutions include: Supporting cross-asset trading and trading strategies with Front Arena Assisting enterprise-wide, market, and credit risk management with Adaptiv, which is used by 12 of the worlds top 25 banks.
Case study: American Express Bank
Case study: JPMorgan Investment Bank
47
COMPANIES A-Z
Thomson Reuters
Thomson Portia 22 Thomson Place Boston MA 02210 USA Tel: +1 617 856 2700 Fax: +1 617 824 2580 portia@thomson.com http://portiaservices.thomsonfinancial.com EMEA contact: Bruno Ballardin, Regional Managing Director, EMEA and Asia Tel: +44 (0) 20 7542 5730 bruno.ballardin@thomsonreuters.com US contact: Craig Lange, Americas Account Director Tel: +1 617 856 5318 craig.lange@thomsonreuters.com APAC contact: Danny Li, Asia Sales, Director Tel: +852 3762 3463 danny.li@thomsonreuters.com Thomson Portia is a wholly owned subsidiary of Thomson Reuters, a leading source of intelligent information. Thomson Portia offers the investment industry powerful and comprehensive enterprise-wide investment accounting systems, which automate the trading, analysis and operations of roughly 300 money managers in 43 countries and manage roughly US$15 trillion. The company also provides buy-side professionals the tools to manage daily transaction activity and to efficiently report activities and returns to management, clients and regulators. The customisable Portia Workspace runs on both Windows XP and Windows Vista and utilises the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0. Additionally, Portia is optimised to run on the Microsoft SQL database. This technology has had a dramatic effect on improving efficiency, optimising workflow across the organisation, and simplifying day-to-day activities.
Trintech
Warnford Court 29 Throgmorton Street London EC2N 2AT UK Carol Orr, Marketing Manager Tel: +44 (0) 20 7628 5235 carol.orr@trintech.com www.trintech.com US contact: Hilliary Opseth, Marketing Manager Tel: +1 972 739 1619 hilliary.opseth@trintech.com Trintech is a leading global provider of financial software and has mapped its software architecture, utilising the Microsoft .NET Framework, onto the latest Microsoft technologies. Its solution suite provides an effective endto-end automated system for reconciliation, exception management, compliance and risk management, and is deployed in over 600 leading companies worldwide.
Case study: Lloyds TSB asset management
Case study: ING
Vhayu Technologies
100 Cooper Court Los Gatos CA 95032 USA Shanti Dev, Head of Sales Tel: +1 408 354 9810 Fax: +1 408 354 9820 shanti@@vhayu.com www.vhayu.com EMEA contact: Tim King, Director of Sales, EMEA Tel: +44 (0) 20 7070 2164 tim.king@vhayu.com APAC contact: Ty Inoyama, Senior Consultant Tel: +81 3 5456 5306 ty.inoyama@vhayu.com Vhayu delivers the fastest market data solutions for the capture and high-speed analysis of massive amounts of streaming and historical data, to the world's leading financial institutions. Through its unique patented Velocity and Squeezer technologies, Vhayu combines software and hardware to provide significant competitive advantages to financial firms concerned with the processing and storage of tick data by enabling faster and smarter trading decisions. The Vhayu Velocity tick database provides advanced 64-bit Windows and Microsoft Visual Studio V8 support. Partnered with some of the worlds leading technology and financial services organisations, Vhayu's customers include eight of the top ten global financial institutions, the leading online discount broker, the largest financial information provider, major hedge funds and trading systems vendors. Vhayu was founded in 1998 by Intel technologists. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, the company also has offices in New York, London and Tokyo.
Visual Numerics
2500 Wilcrest Suite 200 Houston TX 77042 USA Tel: +1 713 784 3131 Fax: +1 713 781 9260 info@vni.com www.vni.com EMEA contact: Greg ORorke, International Territory Manager Tel: +44 (0) 118 963 7745 gororke@vniuk.co.uk US contact: Andy McClure, Director of Sales, North America Tel: +1 925 831 0503 amcclure@vni.com APAC contact: Toshitomo Kobayashi, Country Manager/Representative Director Tel: +81 352 117 760 kobayashi@vnij.co.jp Visual Numerics develops leading edge data analysis and visualisation solutions for technical, business and scientific communities worldwide. Visual Numerics data analysis product, the gold-standard IMSL Numerical Libraries in C, and C# for .NET and Fortran, leverages Microsoft architectures including the desktop, Windows HPC Server 2008, F# and IronPython. Visual Numerics partners with Microsoft to provide advanced analytic solutions and services for Financial Services and Capital Markets that are unsurpassed in the industry. Financial applications that can be built using the IMSL Libraries include: risk management; portfolio optimisation; forecasting; fixed income analysis; trading strategy optimisation; interest rate modelling; and equity price modelling and analysis.
Case study: Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) Capital Markets ABN Amro Capital Markets Case study: NextSigma
49
COMPANY LISTINGS
Volant Technologies
41 East 11th Street 11th Floor New York NY 10003 USA Tel: +1 212 905 6231 info@volantetech.com www.volantetech.com Volant Technologies is an innovative data management solutions company serving the capital markets industry. Its proven solutions accelerate data integration for asset managers, broker dealers, stock exchanges, service providers and industry utilities. They also run on the .NET and BizTalk platforms to enable rapid integration of Microsoft solutions with heterogeneous protocols, applications and middleware platforms. Volants rich, financial domain-aware set of pre-built components coupled with its award-winning integrated development environment has attracted customers, system integrators and independent software vendors across the financial industry due to its ease of use and comprehensive features. Volant is a Swift partner and is certified in the messaging data services category. Volants solutions are easy to maintain, are highly reusable and self-documenting, enabling lower maintenance costs and providing better overall business agility.
WealthCraft Systems
Sales and Marketing division Unit A 9/F On Hing Building 1 On Hing Terrace Central Hong Kong Cliff Harkins, EVP Tel: +852 3586 8233 Fax: +852 3585 3399 cliff.harkins@wealthcraft.com www.wealthcraft.com WealthCraft Systems is an IT company that designs, develops, markets and supports a flexible, scalable and secure technology platform for wealth management services primarily for financial institutions. These include investment advisory firms, securities brokerage firms, retail and private banks, mutual fund companies and insurance companies. WealthCraft's principal business solution, Advisor Workbench (AWB), tightly integrates with Microsoft Dynamics CRM to give financial professionals the tools and services required to develop and expand their wealth management business within the familiar Microsoft environment. AWB's software and services solution enables more efficient and effective customer relationship management, financial planning, investment research, portfolio management and trade execution allowing financial institutions to enhance customer loyalty, improve financial advisor productivity, strengthen customer relationships and increase assets under management. WealthCraft also offers Atoms Order Management, an integrated back-office system, which provides order execution, order management and portfolio and commission management. Based on Microsoft BizTalk Server is Atoms SwiftNet Funds Gateway, a message middleware solution, allowing financial institutions to become SwiftNet enabled to send and receive SwiftNet messages.
Xenomorph
8th Floor 36 Old Jewry London EC2R 8DD UK Brian Sentance, CEO Tel: +44 (0) 20 7614 8600 Fax: +44 (0) 20 7614 8601 bsentance@xenomorph.com www.xenomorph.com US contact: Naj Alavi, Managing Director Tel: +1 888 936 6457 nalavi@xenomorph.com APAC contact: Matthew Skinner, Director Tel: +44 (0) 20 7614 8600 mskinner@xenomorph.com Established in 1995, Xenomorph has offices in London and New York. The company delivers data and analytics management solutions to the financial markets, and its solutions leverage clients proprietary expertise, enabling them to analyse and manage more data with greater control. Xenomorphs TimeScape data and analytics management system contains the following modules: Security master Prices/rates/curves management Data/database integration and normalisation Tick/time series database technology Data distribution Analytics/spreadsheet management Derivatives/product valuation management Data analysis/decision support Trading, research, risk, product control, IT and backoffice staff use TimeScape at investment banks, hedge funds and asset management institutions across the worlds main financial centres.
Xinnovation
1 New England Executive Park Suite 104 Burlington MA 01803 USA Tel: +1 781 272 3300 Fax: +1 781 998 1296 sales@xinn.com www.xinn.com US contact: Michael Cioce, Director, Business Development Tel: +1 781 494 4076 mcioce@xinn.com Xinnovation sets itself apart from its competition by focusing on business automation solutions that deliver measurable value, from its roots as a services firm through its evolution to a product company. Xinnovation reduces corporate effort necessary to create and manage mission critical documents and to effectively communicate with clients. Its XiDocs solution adds functionality far beyond document management. XiDocs bursts documents, spreadsheets and presentations into searchable content fragments and allows business teams to collaboratively assemble new materials by searching for and repurposing content. The power of XiDocs is fully realised when inserting corporate data into rich charts, tables and graphs in a fully automated manner with DocGen application servers. Best of all, it does this using tools users already know, Microsoft Office, while allowing publishing to high-end print-ready PDFs.
Case study: Fidelity
Case study: xenomorph.com
51
COMPANY LISTINGS
XSP
3595 Grandview Parkway Suite 600 Birmingham AL 35242 USA Tel: +1 205 439 5700 Fax: +1 205 439 5769 dretzer@xsp.com www.xsp.com EMEA and APAC contact: Neil Sheppard, COO, EMEA Tel: +44 (0) 20 7959 2400 nsheppard@xsp.com US contact: John Kehoe, Director, Business Development and Account Relationship Management Tel: +1 646 300 6808 jkehoe@xsp.com XSP is a leading provider of corporate actions automation software for the global financial services industry. The XSP v5 platform is a state-of-the-art solution developed to automate each step in the processing of corporate actions. From data management to entitlement management and notification and response capture, global financial institutions gain immediate return on investment with XSPs flexible modular approach and rules-based workflow engine. Engineered using advanced Microsoft technologies, the XSP v5 platform is built around a service oriented architecture using .NET technology (including the Enterprise Library) and Web services for global enterprise-wide processing. This highly scalable architecture provides a flexible solution for integrating the platform with a wide range of legacy financial solutions including leveraging Microsofts BizTalk Accelerator for Swift to integrate with the Swift Alliance Network. The Microsoft Enterprise Library provides a robust platform for meeting a variety of enterprise requirements for solutions architectures.
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CAPITAL MARKETS

PARTNER GUIDE 2009

Michel van Leeuwen Managing Director Worldwide Capital Markets Microsoft

Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009

Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009

FINANCIAL SERVICES ENTERPRISES WANT TO DIFFERENTIATE

WE WANT TO GROW OUR COLLECTIVE KNOWLEDGE BASE

BRAD PRODGER, DIRECTOR, WORLDWIDE ADVISOR PLATFORM, MICROSOFT

OPEN ALL HOURS

Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009

Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009

Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009

INCREASINGLY, BANKS ARE

TRYING TO MOVE THEIR PRODUCT FOCUS, CREATING DEDICATED SALES TEAMS

COMMUNICATION, INFORMATION, INTEGRATION

Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009

Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009

THE EXPONENTIAL GROWTH IN THE AMOUNT OF DATA A

ANDY HUGHES, DIRECTOR OF INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS, MICROSOFT

Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009

TRADING FOR PROFIT OR TRADING TO COMPLY?

Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009

MICROSOFT OFFICE SHAREPOINT SERVER 2007

CRM FOR WEALTH MANAGEMENT PROFESSIONALS

Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009

Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009

RAYMOND JAMES FINANCIAL

Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009

Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009

Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009

Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009

Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009

DIRECTORY COMPANIES A-Z

Case study: Linedata Risk Analytics

Case study: Multinational Investment Company uses TAPMaster

Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009

Case study: London Stock Exchange

Case study: Raymond James

Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc.

Case study: clusterseven.com

Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009

Comprehensive Software Systems

Case study: csssoftware.com

Case study: coral8.com

Case study: III Offshore Advisors

Case study: doculabs.com

Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009

Case study: Kohlberg Kravis Roberts

Case studies: Monte Paschi Group Energy Trading Industry

Information Management Group

Case study: imgroup.com

Case study: Global Investment Bank

Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009

Kynetix Technology Group

Case study: Ai Claims Solutions

Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009

Case study: SunTrust

Case study: Daiwa Securities Global Asset Services

Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009

Case study: www.protegesoft.com

Case study: Merrill Lynch

Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009

Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009