CAPITAL MARKETS

PARTNER GUIDE 2009

INTRODUCTION

FOREWORD
elcome to the Worldwide Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009.
W 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 today’s 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 20 30

2 12 26
FEATURE PROFILED
SPEND IT WISELY 2 CITI 20
How Microsoft’s Advisor Platform can help Citi built its Tick Store Reg NMS solution
financial services enterprises differentiate using SQL Server
themselves by providing more holistic
customer service RAYMOND JAMES FINANCIAL 22
Raymond James improved branch office
ON THE PLATFORM 8 efficiency with an integrated CRM solution
Sell-side capital markets firms face unique
challenges in maximising the profitability of REGNAN 24
institutional clients. Microsoft has developed Institutional investment research firm Regnan
the Institutional Client Platform to address their improved organisation, security and service
specific needs with an integrated Microsoft environment

STRANGE LANDSCAPE 12 REUTERS 26

Investment managers must give serious thought Reuters used SQL Server and Windows Server
to their IT as they negotiate a changing business to achieve a scalable relational database
and regulatory landscape management system

COMMENTARY
TRADING FOR PROFIT OR
TRADING TO COMPLY?
Andy Hughes discusses how Microsoft can
help traders focus on what they do best
CRM FOR WEALTH
MANAGEMENT PROFESSIONALS
Mainstay Partners assessed how wealth
management firms are using Dynamics CRM.
Here are some examples
THOMSON FINANCIAL 28
Thomson Financial used a range of Microsoft
technologies to refresh its Portia portfolio
16 management system
XENOMORPH 30
Real-time analytics and data management
solutions provider Xenomorph worked with
18 Microsoft to deliver high performance on
standards-based technology
DIRECTORY
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.

1
 FEATURE
SPEND IT WISELY
hen you’re a financial advisor or
W 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. It’s 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.
Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009
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 deployment and savings leveraging Microsoft
cannot be underestimated. By enabling server technologies..

THE TIME MIX

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
But simply throwing money at the problem
isn’t the answer – in order to support
advisors as part of a dynamic business, the
system needs to be a part of the company’s
strategy, connecting information from
multiple systems and silos so that advisors
can see a full picture not only of how and

3
 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, up-
to-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
can’t 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, we’re
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.
Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009
”
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. “There’s 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 region’s financial firms are
able to extend their vision beyond Microsoft’s
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 platform’s 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.”
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
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, Microsoft’s
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
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.”
5
 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 we’re
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
Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009
thought leaders who are picking what we’ve
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 it’s easy to
consume, so we can leverage it to learn
more about the markets and capture
intellectual property from those initiatives,”
concludes Prodger. “We’ll 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
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 third-
party 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.
can be openly consumed by subsidiaries
across the globe. We’re 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 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
7
 FEATURE
ON THE PLATFORM
verywhere you look, customers are
E 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. “It’s a very competitive market, with
many different product lines such as equities,
foreign exchange, fixed income or derivatives.
In this environment, simply selling products
isn’t 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. They’re 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
Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009
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 don’t 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. It’s 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, they’re realising that they
don’t 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, it’s
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. “It’s a
single, cross-functional view of what the
customer is doing. That’s a big dream, but
increasingly, as the credit crunch bites, banks
are trying to achieve it.” Indeed, for an
9
 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.
“It’s an extremely simple process to launch a
phone call and talk to the customer
immediately from within the Institutional
Client Platform,” says IPC’s Silvester. “It’s 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
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. “It’s a very tight group,
because we wanted to focus on ensuring
quality and achieving something concrete that
we can later extend outwards,” says Warford.
“We’ve 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.
We’re 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.”
Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009
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. We’ve already created
this solution with Microsoft, and it is in use with
customers now. The feedback we’re receiving
from them is that it’s giving them a view of
their business at micro and macro levels that
they never had before. They’re using the
information to improve their understanding of
their customers and make sure they deliver the
best level of customer service.”
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 Microsoft’s 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 it’s using best-of-breed
solutions to address this.”
The team’s initial focus is on integrating
distribution, CRM and client analytics with the
turret system – the high-end telephone system
used by traders and salespeople. “It’s 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 it’s 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, we’re
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 it’s 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 can’t be used
due to compliance or various other reasons. If
there are pieces that can’t 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 we’ve 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. We’d 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 IPC’s 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
I 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
Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009
their IT. Legacy systems simply can’t 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 TowerGroup’s 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 event-
based 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 ever-
increasing 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
Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009
”
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 computer-
generated 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 under-
resourced 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 front-
office 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, it’s always been about
F 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.
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 today’s world,
Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009
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.

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 non-
discriminatory 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.
Microsoft’s collaborative solutions are used
by many global organisations to create
content, influence corporate culture and
manage change.
Microsoft’s 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
W 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.
TRANEL FINANCIAL GROUP
Illinois-based Tranel Financial Group’s
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.
Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009
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 Austria’s
largest cooperative bank and one of Europe’s
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
Raiffeisenbank’s 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:
• 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
iti’s suite of Lava technology products
C has earned a reputation for market-
leading performance and innovation
in one of the world’s most demanding
computational environments – providing real-
time 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, non-
integrated systems sitting on their desk. The
Lava ColorMaker solution builds market-
making 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
Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009
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 didn’t
even consider Microsoft because providing
Reg NMS compliance is so demanding,” adds
Rocco Mangino, Citi’s 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 didn’t think SQL
Server could do it, but I’d 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.”
Citi’s 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 day’s 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 Store’s 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 Database relational environment, compliance
president of product development for Lava query response times have gone from hours to
technology at Citi. “We can recreate the exact less than a second. The solution also provides
market montage for any given point in time.” the agility to meet internal and customer
Building the Tick Store using the Microsoft needs, scalability to match trading growth,
Application Platform has enhanced and the lowest total cost of ownership of any
performance so well that the Lava technology solution that Citi looked at.
team values it as a competitive advantage. “SQL Server has continued to scale to meet
With Tick Store support for pumping our needs,” says Neidenbach. “And we see no
historical data, as needed, into the Tick end in sight for that scaling.”

21
 PROFILED
RAYMOND JAMES FINANCIAL
lobal financial services provider
G 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
Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009
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 that’s the tool they’re
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 James’s own five-
member 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 couldn’t 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
R 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 Westpac-
owned BT Financial Group, where it relied on
the group’s 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 Group’s 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
Regnan’s plans, but one company suggested
Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009
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 Regnan’s staff access to the company’s
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, we’re
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 JayThom’s 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 it’s 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
user’s 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
F best known as the world’s 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 world’s 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
Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009
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 world’s
leading brokerage firms, investment banks,
market research, and independent research
providers. The financial research historical
database contains more than nine million full-
text 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 company’s main
data centre at 75 Park Place, New York, with its
secondary data centre in Nutley, New Jersey.
SQL Server has met the company’s
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 company’s 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 couldn’t 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 I’ve experienced so many lesser
disaster recovery efforts where things wouldn’t
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.
Meikson’s 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 with I had to memorise long command line
functionality of the graphical user interface is sequences. With Enterprise Manager you can
extremely efficient and easy to work with. just click away. It provides a nice and easy way
With other database products I’ve worked to accomplish what you need to do.”

27
 PROFILED
THOMSON FINANCIAL
homson Financial provides
T 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 don’t 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
Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009
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 we’ve used it since
our company’s inception in 1994,” says Russ
Martin, senior financial systems architect for the
company. “But it’s a little intimidating when you
first encounter it. It doesn’t 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 Microsoft’s
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, workflow-
enabled 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. “It’s 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 company’s central information
systems, the accuracy of Portia’s 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. We’ve
increased our pipeline of new leads and are
more competitive. Nothing else on the market
comes close to this product’s 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
29
 PROFILED
XENOMORPH
enomorph delivers real-time analytics
X 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 world’s
financial centres. They use Xenomorph’s
sophisticated TimeScape technology, a real-
time 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 industry’s 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 database’s
Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009
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
product’s 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 we’re offering on
SQL Server 2008.
“Our customers want very clear
information about the performance of our managers will still see the same financial
solution, and in this regard we decided for instruments, performance levels and
this first benchmark to test random access to execution speeds to which they’re
tick data physically stored on disk and not accustomed, but customers’ IT teams can
held in memory. We aimed for time-series expect to experience a significant difference.
performance that was at least an order of The standards-based technology helps to
magnitude better than traditional row-based ensure that company administrators can now
solutions and comparable to our existing handle management of the database without
proprietary database solution. I am pleased to having to rely on specialist development
say we achieved this with our SQL Server teams. “Our clients feel that their developers
2008 implementation, which additionally will be able to spend more time focusing on
offered very low levels of contention for multi- value-added activities, such as creating more
user access, and no material degradation of advanced user functionality,” says Sentance.
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 they’d like to move away from
proprietary solutions towards a standards-
based approach,” says Sentance. “They’re
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

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

31
DIRECTORY COMPANIES A-Z

Altaira Asset Control

Trading/Portfolio Risk division Crystal Tower
4422 South Century Drive 20th Floor
Murray Orlyplein 10
UT 84123-2513 1043 DP
USA Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Blaise Labriola, Managing Director
Tel: +1 801 288 8928 Tel: +31 20 580 6900
bflabriola@altairallc.com Fax: +31 20 580 6999
www.altairallc.com info@asset-control.com
www.asset-control.com
Altaira is the premier cross-asset portfolio system for
front-to-middle trading and risk-management. Using EMEA contact: Claudio Capozzi, EMEA Sales Director
tools like C# for rapid application development, Tel: +44 (0) 20 7743 0320
Microsoft .NET for a rich client interface, grid computing ccapozzi@asset-control.com
for unlimited scalability, and Web services for both cross-
platform interoperability and extensibility, Altaira US contact: John Mitchell, North America Sales Director
provides both the system and the flexibility to customise Tel: +1 646 673 8886
it to meet the needs of today’s competitive markets. jmitchell@asset-control.com
Designed by traders for traders, Altaira software has a
number of features, which include job management APAC contact: Alex Rich, Asia Pacific Sales Director
services, deal pricing services and management services. Tel: +65 6248 4677
All operate on Microsoft XP or Vista and integrate with arich@asset-control.com
multiple formats to make for the best overall portfolio
and risk management solution currently available for the Asset Control provides centralised data management
high-end enterprise, the individual trader, and everything solutions for financial institutions worldwide. From
in between. 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
Case study: Linedata Risk Analytics reduce costs and risk, manage evolving compliance
needs, and accelerate the delivery of new products and
services.
Asset Control has helped some of the world’s most
successful financial institutions optimise their data
infrastructures, enhance decision-making, and reduce
complexity.

Case study: Multinational Investment

Company uses TAPMaster

Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009

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 customer’s 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 Avanade’s Enterprise
CRM for wealth management, business intelligence
solutions, and ACA, the Avanade Connected
Architectures, to streamline software development.
Case study: London Stock Exchange
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-of-
ownership 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.
BlueThread’s 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: Raymond James
33
COMPANIES A-Z

Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. ClusterSeven

1981 Marcus Avenue 10 Fashion Street
Lake Success London
NY 11042 E1 6PX
USA UK

Arlene Driscoll, VP, Marketing Henry Umney, VP, Sales

Tel: +1 888 237 1900 Tel: +44 (0) 20 7426 1000
info@broadridge.com humney@clusterseven.com
www.broadridge.com www.clusterseven.com

EMEA and APAC contact: Mike West, VP, Marketing US contact: Richard Dodd, VP, Americas
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7551 3000 Tel: +1 212 858 7790
mike.west@broadridge.com rdodd@clusterseven.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’s 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

Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009

Comprehensive Software Systems Coral8
25178 Genesee Trail Road 82 Pioneer Way
Golden Suite 106
CO 80401 Mountain View
USA CA 94041
USA
Faye Woodley, Senior Manager, Business Development
Tel: +1 303 876 1500 Colin Clark, EVP, Financial Services
Fax: +1 303 526 9362 Tel: +1 650 210 3810
faye.woodley@csssoftware.com Fax: +1 650 210 3811
www.csssoftware.com cclark@coral8.com
www.coral8.com
Comprehensive Software Systems (CSS) is a client-centric
software development company that provides full Coral8's next generation Complex Event Processing
enterprise and point solution offerings to the financial platform enables quick creation and deployment of live
services industry. It works to understand its clients’ analytic applications that provide up-to-the-minute
specific needs and challenges and offer them innovative business intelligence to help users make better decisions
software and services for their front-to-back-office faster and take appropriate actions that can lead to
processing needs. positive impact on their businesses.
As an alternative to mainframe technology, CSS has the Coral8 can help its customers build systems for:
ability to rapidly adapt to market demands, client needs, • Real-time profit and loss
and regulatory initiatives and offers its clients full access • Real-time market data analytics
to business data in real time – all day, every day. Its • Risk management systems
solutions function either as an enterprise solution or as a • Smart order routing and execution management
stand-alone point solution that seamlessly integrates into • Order and liquidity analysis
a firm’s existing system to gain momentum with a new • Quantitative trading and signal generation
competitive advantage. • Surveillance and compliance.

All solutions leverage many Microsoft products that

Case study: csssoftware.com 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: 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.
Case study: III Offshore Advisors
Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009
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 company’s fundamental belief
that in order to protect a client’s 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 well-
informed decisions.
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.
Case study: Kohlberg Kravis Roberts
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 Web-
commerce companies, five of the world's top online
gaming companies, and leading Internet media
organisations.
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 world’s largest
banks by a factor of five times.
Case study: imgroup.com
Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009
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: Global Investment Bank
Infusion Development IPC Systems
291 Broadway 3 Second Street
13th Floor Jersey City
New York NJ 07311
NY 10007 USA
USA
Tel: +1 201 253 2000
Christian Schneider, COO Fax: +1 201 253 2361
Tel: +1 212 732 6100 www.ipc.com
Fax: +1 212 732 3335
cschneider@infusion.com US contact: Len Bontempi, VP/Managing Director,
www.infusion.com Americas
Tel: +1 212 858 7867
EMEA contact: Bryan Shiffman, Director len.bontempi@ipc.com
Tel: +44 (0) 207 936 1620
bshiffman@infusion.com EMEA contact: Kevin Acott, Managing Director, EMEA
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7979 7221
APAC contact: Cortez La Palme, General Manager kevin.acott@ipc.com
Tel: +971 50 354 0172
clapalme@infusion.com APAC contact: David Dodd, Managing Director,
Asia Pacific
Infusion Development is a Microsoft Gold Certified Tel: +852 2899 8028
Partner that applies emerging technologies to solve david.dodd@ipc.com
complex software problems. Its international offices in
New York, London, Toronto, Boston, and Dubai offer a IPC is a leading provider of indispensable financial
full suite of information technology services with a focus trading communications solutions to the world’s largest
on talent, technology, and design-driven methodologies, financial services firms and global enterprises. With 35
placing Infusion at the forefront of application and years of expertise and product innovation, IPC provides
interface exploration. its customers with global systems and solutions, as well
Infusion has implemented solutions for many of the as a suite of products and enhanced services that include
world’s largest organisations in the financial services, advanced Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and an
travel and tourism, healthcare, technology, and integrated network with 24/7, 365 day management
government sectors. Infusion’s proprietary and Microsoft services for more than 40 countries.
emerging technology solutions are implemented around The company produces a number of IPC solutions,
the world by its team of over 200 full-time consultants. 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 Kynetix Technology Group

EMEA divison Token House
26 Worple Road 12 Tokenhouse Yard
Wimbledon London
London EC2R 7AS
SW19 4EE
UK Matt Dolton, Client Services Director
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7836 1800
Ruan Scott, VP, EMEA division Fax: +44 (0) 20 7836 1801
Tel: +44 (0) 20 8971 3450 matt.dolton@kyntex.com
Fax: +44 (0) 20 8946 8844 www.kynetix.com
ruan@k2.com
www.k2.com Kynetix partners with UK capital market firms to enable
its customers to concentrate on their core competencies,
US contact: Glen Bryant, VP, US division build valuable client relationships and focus on profits.
Tel: +1 425 883 4200 The company’s key differentiator is its ability to deliver
glen@k2.com purpose-built solutions quickly, using its specialist
financial services insight.
APAC contact: Weng Him Koh, VP, APAC division Kynetix can fix inflexible, home-grown, or out-of-date
Tel: +65 6327 4110 packaged applications by rapidly building and
wenghim@k2.com implementing software solutions incorporating Microsoft
Dynamics CRM, BizTalk Server, Office SharePoint Server,
K2 is a platform for building process-driven applications SQL Server and Excel Services.
that improve business efficiency. Its applications are As a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, it has the
flexible and scalable and can span employees, capabilities to provide flexible, rapidly delivered,
departments, organisations and line-of-business systems. integrated solutions that provide its customers with a
All applications are built on .NET and leverage existing competitive advantage.
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.

Case study: Ai Claims Solutions

Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009

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.
Linedata’s 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.
Case study: SunTrust
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.
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 world’s 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.
Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009
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. Netik’s 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 world’s leading asset managers,
hedge funds, wealth managers, private bankers, prime
brokers, fund administrators, custodians, investment
operational outsourcing providers and investment banks.
Netik’s 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 Safdié 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 Microsoft’s SQL Server 2005, which allows for
ease of integration, enhanced performance and
scalability, BasisPoint provides enhanced navigation that
leverages Microsoft’s .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).
Portrait’s 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.
Portrait’s suite is a .NET solution, which extends
Microsoft CRM to accelerate cross-selling during inbound
and outbound interactions by infusing automated best-
next-action (BNA) decision-making into Microsoft CRM
screens.
Case study: Merrill Lynch
Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009
Protégésoft
1 North Bridge Road
19-04 High Street Centre
179094
Singapore
Kumaran Pillai, CEO
Tel: + 65 6584 3994
kumaran@protegesoft.com
www.protegesoft.com
Protégésoft 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
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 Mobile’s
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 Mobile’s 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 world’s leading exchanges.
Its products include high-performance FIX engines,
workflow enablement of FIX via integration with
Microsoft’s BizTalk Server, an Internet-based Web-Dealer
platform, and Algo-strategies editor.
ShortCut, the company’s 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 ScaleOut Software

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 world’s 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.
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 Software’s 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, in-
memory 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
StateServer’s unique, highly integrated and self-managing
design makes distributed caching easy-to-deploy and use.

Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009

Singularity SunGard
Capital Markets division Capital Markets & Investment Banking division
100 Patrick Street 25 Canada Square
Derry London
BT48 7EL E14 5LQ
Northern Ireland UK

Philip Mills, Account Manager Jane Boorman, Head of Strategic Alliances and
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7826 4470 Business Development
Fax: +44 (0) 20 7826 4480 Tel: +44 (0) 20 8081 2779
sales@singularity.co.uk jane.boorman@sungard.com
www.singularity.co.uk www.sungard.com

US contact: Nino Stimac, Account Manager SunGard provides solutions for today’s investment
Tel: +1 212 203 9360 banker. Whether it’s controlling the cost of trading or
sales@singularity.co.uk organising settlements, there’s a SunGard solution for
every kind of investment banking.
APAC contact: Andy Lim, Account Manager SunGard’s capital markets and investment banking
Tel: +65 9616 7732 solutions include:
sales@singularity.co.uk • Supporting cross-asset trading and trading strategies
with Front Arena
Singularity provides business process agility software and • Assisting enterprise-wide, market, and credit risk
services that equip financial market businesses to streamline management with Adaptiv, which is used by 12 of the
operations, realise efficiencies, and increase effectiveness. world’s top 25 banks.
Over 100 financial institutions globally rely on
Singularity to deliver process agility and efficiency. In the
front-office it improves efficiency and effectiveness of Case study: American Express Bank
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.
Singularity’s 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.

Case study: JPMorgan Investment Bank

47
COMPANIES A-Z

Thomson Reuters Trintech

Thomson Portia Warnford Court
22 Thomson Place 29 Throgmorton Street
Boston London
MA 02210 EC2N 2AT
USA UK

Tel: +1 617 856 2700 Carol Orr, Marketing Manager

Fax: +1 617 824 2580 Tel: +44 (0) 20 7628 5235
portia@thomson.com carol.orr@trintech.com
http://portiaservices.thomsonfinancial.com www.trintech.com

EMEA contact: Bruno Ballardin, Regional Managing US contact: Hilliary Opseth, Marketing Manager
Director, EMEA and Asia Tel: +1 972 739 1619
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7542 5730 hilliary.opseth@trintech.com
bruno.ballardin@thomsonreuters.com
Trintech is a leading global provider of financial software
US contact: Craig Lange, Americas Account Director and has mapped its software architecture, utilising the
Tel: +1 617 856 5318 Microsoft .NET Framework, onto the latest Microsoft
craig.lange@thomsonreuters.com technologies. Its solution suite provides an effective end-
to-end automated system for reconciliation, exception
APAC contact: Danny Li, Asia Sales, Director management, compliance and risk management, and is
Tel: +852 3762 3463 deployed in over 600 leading companies worldwide.
danny.li@thomsonreuters.com

Thomson Portia is a wholly owned subsidiary of Thomson Case study: Lloyds TSB asset management
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.

Case study: ING

Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009

Vhayu Technologies Visual Numerics
100 Cooper Court 2500 Wilcrest
Los Gatos Suite 200
CA 95032 Houston
USA TX 77042
USA
Shanti Dev, Head of Sales
Tel: +1 408 354 9810 Tel: +1 713 784 3131
Fax: +1 408 354 9820 Fax: +1 713 781 9260
shanti@@vhayu.com info@vni.com
www.vhayu.com www.vni.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 world’s 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.
Case study: Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) Capital Markets
ABN Amro Capital Markets
EMEA contact: Greg O’Rorke,
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: NextSigma

49
COMPANY LISTINGS
Volanté Technologies
41 East 11th Street
11th Floor
New York
NY 10003
USA
Tel: +1 212 905 6231
info@volantetech.com
www.volantetech.com
Volanté 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.
Volanté’s 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. Volanté is a Swift partner and is
certified in the messaging data services category.
Volanté’s solutions are easy to maintain, are highly
reusable and self-documenting, enabling lower
maintenance costs and providing better overall business
agility.
Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009
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 Xinnovation
8th Floor 1 New England Executive Park
36 Old Jewry Suite 104
London Burlington
EC2R 8DD MA 01803
UK USA

Brian Sentance, CEO Tel: +1 781 272 3300

Tel: +44 (0) 20 7614 8600 Fax: +1 781 998 1296
Fax: +44 (0) 20 7614 8601 sales@xinn.com
bsentance@xenomorph.com www.xinn.com
www.xenomorph.com
US contact: Michael Cioce, Director, Business
US contact: Naj Alavi, Managing Director Development
Tel: +1 888 936 6457 Tel: +1 781 494 4076
nalavi@xenomorph.com mcioce@xinn.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.
Xenomorph’s 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 back-
office staff use TimeScape at investment banks, hedge
funds and asset management institutions across the
world’s main financial centres.
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.
It’s 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 XSP’s 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 Microsoft’s 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.

Capital Markets Partner Guide 2009

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