SunGard’s Common Services Architecture Enters Proof-of-Concept Stage
After five years of development, SunGard’s common services architecture framework for its technology portfolio, known as Infinity, has begun active testing with a number of unnamed banks.
Version 1.0 will include over 20 current SunGard services with more core banking applications being added in the next six months, and is expected to go live some time in the second quarter of 2008. The project, which will deploy service-oriented architecture (SOA), is aiming to make SunGard’s extensive yet disparate software portfolio more easily available to customers, allowing them to dip into a central registry and select component-based services on a consumption basis.
According to Clare Porter, SunGard’s managing director of global business intelligence, the approach adopted for Infinity represents the future of software development for the firm. In particular, Porter drew attention to SunGard’s development of a registry within Infinity that will act as a library containing all the available components, noting that customers often praise SOA but lament that it can be hard to navigate.
Porter also says that, in time, SunGard will be able to migrate its current customers onto the Infinity framework, thereby reducing their software ‘footprint’ and reducing any duplication. In addition to the proof-of-concept, SunGard has created an advisory board involving many of its larger customers that will meet twice a year to discuss the development of the service. SunGard is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and SunGard has worked with Microsoft and used .NET on the CSA project.
www.sungard.com
SocGen Rolls out Xenomorph’s TimeScape
Société Générale Securities Services (SGSS) has rolled out Xenomorph’s TimeScape data management system to support its derivatives operation.
The product is being used by SGSS’s asset servicing department to create a single, consistent and centralized source of all data used in the pricing of derivatives on behalf of clients. TimeScape was implemented in order to avoid the overuse of spreadsheets in managing complex and changing derivatives data, says SGSS, who signed a five-year deal for the technology.
TimeScape will also support high added-value services, such as independent valuation of structured derivatives and risk management. The product’s validation capabilities are used to control and cleanse multiple sources of market and instrument data for use by other downstream systems. TimeScape was implemented within six months and has been integrated with SGSS’ derivatives platform, Summit.
Based upon Microsoft technology, TimeScape is an application platform designed specifically to provide high-performance, high-volume data management, analysis and pricing services for financial services organizations.
www.socgen.com
www.xenomorph.com
Microsoft and Zend Team on Web Transaction Security
Zend Technologies and Microsoft have announced a strategic collaboration aimed at improving the trustworthiness of Web-based interactions and providing people with better control over their personal information on the Web.
The Microsoft-Zend Technologies relationship will enable support for information cards by PHP developers through a component built for the Zend Framework. Using this as a stand-alone component or as part of the framework, PHP developers will be able to specify a Web site’s security policy and accept information cards from trusted third parties.
PHP (a recursive initialism for Hypertext Preprocessor) is a reflective programming language designed for producing dynamic Web pages. It was originally produced by the PHP Group, and Zend’s co-founders rewrote the parser for it, forming the base of PHP 3. Zend Framework is an open source PHP application framework for developing Web applications and Web services.
When support for information cards within the Zend Framework is enabled, users who access PHP-enabled Web sites will receive consistent user control of their digital identities and improved confidence in the authentication process for remote applications, all with greater security than password-based Web logins offer.
For consumers, Zend Technologies’ implementation of information cards enables users to provide their digital identities in a familiar, security-enhanced and simple way. They are analogous to business cards, credit cards or membership cards that people use every day.
The cooperative work on information cards that Microsoft announced with Zend extends the company’s previous interoperability efforts in this area. Microsoft, in collaboration with industry partners Fraunhofer Institute FOKUS and ThoughtWorks Inc., has developed open source interoperability projects on information cards for systems based on Sun Microsystems Inc.’s Java language, as well as Ruby.
www.zend.com
StarCompliance Software Launches New Cutting-Edge Compliance Products
Rockville, MD-based StarCompliance Software has released its next-generation .NET-based compliance and regulatory products for financial institutions. The solutions, built using .NET and Microsoft SQL Server 2005, can be either client- or StarCompliance-hosted on a secure one-to-one infrastructure model.
The newest products address conflicts-of-interest abuses by employees involving personal trading, gifts and entertainment, and other issues. For compliance and IT professionals and other employees of regulated financial services firms the new editions offer easy-to-use, integrated and streamlined compliance processes for managing, preventing, detecting, reporting, and enforcing employee conflicts and risk surveillance activities through a single application. The technology was developed in conjunction with legal experts specializing in SEC, FINRA and FSA regulations.
The products, Star IA for buy-side firms, Star BD for broker/dealers and Star IA/BD for diversified financial institutions involved in both buy- and sell-side activities, are each available in three editions: Express for smaller firms operating solely in one country, Professional for medium to large firms operating solely in one country, and Enterprise for medium to large firms with a global presence.
www.starcompliance.com
World’s Oldest Bank Implements Microsoft-based Payments System
Italy-based Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS), considered to be the world’s oldest bank, has implemented a payments processing product for its corporate customers based on Microsoft technology.
The system will be rolled out across the entire MPS Group, which includes Banca Toscana and Banca Agricola Mantovana. The bank hopes as a result of the implementation it will be able to reduce its payment time from a few days to real-time and will cut operating costs by as much as 50 percent.
The system has been jointly developed by the bank and Microsoft, along with IT services from Getronics and Avanade, a joint venture between Accenture and Microsoft. Employing Microsoft SQL and BizTalk Server, the system is also based on the ISO 20022 messaging standard for compliance with the Single Euro Payment Area regulation.
“For this project, MPS Group, Microsoft, Avanade and Getronics chose to move away from traditional IT systems development and instead apply advanced technology innovatively and strategically to achieve the bank’s desire for a solid payments architecture built on Microsoft technology,” said Sheida Hadji-Ashrafi, worldwide industry manager for Payments at Microsoft. The MPS deal follows a similar announcement by Spain-based Banco Santander, which is employing Microsoft technology in an overhaul of its payments systems.
www.mps.it
www.avanade.com
www.getronics.com
Cathay Life Insurance Boosts Sales with Mobile Solution
Cathay Life has rolled out Dopod CHT 9000 and Dopod CHT 9100 Windows Mobile 5.0 devices to deliver up-to-date information to field agents remotely. The mobile devices allow agents to draw on digital in-house material for sales presentations, as opposed to carrying heavy product catalogs.
The company, which is the largest life insurer in Taiwan, already had an intelligent financial management system called “All In Me” that allowed operational staff to check on a client’s insurance details and download policies, but the challenge was to mobilize this application for use by field agents.
Much of the information that agents carried in paper form was company confidential, yet could be easily mislaid or even stolen. The Windows-based mobile devices curb security breaches by automatically locking up the information after downloading to prevent unauthorized data downloading. Also, agents must periodically go online to be re-verified.
More than 1,000 devices with built-in wireless capabilities were rolled out to allow field agents to connect to the Web and access the company’s “All In Me Wealth Management Intelligent System.”
Independent software vendor Great Mobile helped develop and configure Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system with all the key features for use by its mobile field staff.
www.cathaylife.com
Ring2 Supports Windows Mobile Devices
Ring2 Conferencing, the first audio-conferencing company to offer remote control of calls from a mobile device has extended its service to support Windows Mobile 5 and 6 devices. Ring2 customers with these devices can now take remote control of their conference calls.
While they can still dial into the call from any phone, their Windows mobile device now becomes a separate remote controller of the call with visibility, security and control features. Specifically, Ring2 alerts the call leader’s mobile device as soon as the first invited guest enters, and the leader can join the call from a phone of choice; see a real-time list of participants as they join or leave; ensure no one is listening who shouldn’t be; add a missing participant from a mobile device address book; mute a participant with distracting background noise; and record the call, downloadable as an MP3 afterwards.
Ring2 Conferencing is targeting specific vertical sectors that make frequent calls and have high PDA penetration, such as financial services, legal, consulting and other professional services.
www.ring2conferencing.com
Raymond James Taps Blue Frog for Annuities Processing
Raymond James & Associates has signed with Blue Frog Solutions, and the firm’s insurance subsidiary, Planning Corporation of America (PCA) expects to go live with Blue Frog’s AFFIRM for Annuities Compliance and Order Management System in May 2008.
Through the financial advisors of Raymond James’ broker-dealer subsidiaries, PCA provides product and marketing support for a wide range of insurance products, including fixed and variable annuities, life insurance, disability insurance and long-term care coverage. Annuity sales are an important part of PCA’s business; the firm reports approximately $3 billion in annual annuity sales.
While PCA currently has an order entry system in place, the firm chose to replace it for several reasons, including more efficient regulatory compliance. Blue Frog Solutions is a Microsoft industry partner.
www.raymondjames.com
www.bluefrogsolutions.com
Digipede Network 2.0 Furthers Microsoft Integration
Grid software provider Digipede Technologies unveiled version 2.0 of its .NET-based Digipede Network, featuring improved low latency capabilities, greater scalability, further integration with security installations and a more powerful control interface for grid-enabling applications.
The latest release integrates with Microsoft Active Directory, which improves control over user access and privileges on the grid. Version 2.0 also includes improved capabilities for administrators who work with larger numbers of Digipede Agents, users and applications.
Lower latency throughout the system improves performance on short tasks and additional options for taking advantage of multiple cores gives broad classes of applications greater performance increases.
The upgrade concentrates on enhancing the ability of customers and ISV partners to roll out new grid-enabled applications quickly and economically, with better management of Digipede Agents used to coordinate the distributed work.
www.digipede.net
Fidessa LatentZero Expands in Japan
Fidessa Group plc has expanded its operations in Japan to include the provision of a local language helpdesk for the Fidessa LatentZero products along with dedicated sales and implementation resources.
The Fidessa LatentZero buy-side product suite provides investment management front-office software for portfolio analysis, modelling, order generation, order and execution management (OEMS) and trading, with integrated pre- and post-trade compliance.
This expansion comes as a result of increasing demand from the buy-side community in Japan for the Fidessa LatentZero solution, and follows the acquisition earlier this year of LatentZero by Fidessa. Previously, Fidessa LatentZero clients in the region were supported remotely from the company’s European and US-based centers.
Fidessa, a Microsoft partner, has had a presence in the Japanese market now for more than seven years and counts 28 financial institutions there as clients. There are more than 70 staff based in its Tokyo office, and these teams are now being expanded to provide further support for the Fidessa LatentZero product suite.
www.fidessa.com
Reuters Selects Vhayu for Wealth Management Services
Reuters has chosen Vhayu Velocity to capture, analyze and store multi-asset class real-time market data for Reuter’s wealth management offering.
Vhayu Velocity’s streaming tick processing and persistence software was chosen based on its ability to process data from any asset class, publish configurable intervals of time series data and store more than twenty years worth of historical tick data. By deploying Velocity, Reuters can phase out a legacy in-house database to effectively scale operations, decrease data latency and deliver global, real-time cross market data to wealth management professionals.
Reuters has worked with Vhayu, a Microsoft partner, over the past two years via a redistribution partnership, and Velocity is already tightly integrated with RMDS.
www.reuters.com
www.vhayu.com
TD Banknorth Selects CheckFree for Fraud Detection Capabilities
TD Banknorth has selected CheckFree Corporation to deliver a solution that will allow the bank to process its own official checks and integrate into its CheckFree ARP/SMS check and deposit reconciliation system.
The new solution will assist TD Banknorth in ensuring the validity of official bank checks being cashed, the timely reconciliation of the accounts, and supplemental reporting for research and resolution purposes. It is designed to both enter and evaluate issues in a memo post status to ensure proper cashing of official bank checks. The solution will provide tellers with information that will assist them in determining whether checks should or should not be paid, thereby reducing fraud and risk exposure at the teller line. In addition to fraud protection at the branches, the use of a memo post issue can help ensure that the balance of the official bank check account is not misstated or incorrectly funded prior to DDA posting.
Currently TD Banknorth outsources to a vendor that is exiting the market. CheckFree plans to complete the delivery of the new solution for TD Banknorth in early 2008. Additional offerings that will also be available include escheatment of aged outstanding issue items in compliance with the various state regulations. CheckFree is a Microsoft partner.
www.tdbanknorth.com
www.checkfree.com