News

Formicary Strengthens Group Chat Presence by Joining Financial Services Instant Messaging Association (FIMA)

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 11:29:31 GMT

London, 7 July 2010 - Formicary, an information technology company specialising in integrated solutions for the financial services industry, has become an affiliate vendor member of the Financial Services Instant Messaging Association (FIMA), an organisation dedicated to understanding and promoting the Instant Messaging (IM) requirements of the financial services industry. Joining FIMA not only re-enforces Formicary’s standing as an IM Group Chat authority, but demonstrates the company’s commitment to the industry.

FIMA’s membership includes all of the world’s largest global financial institutions as well as a cross section of firms who are active in the Instant Messaging Space. As an affiliated vendor member, Formicary will be able to share experiences and best practices with its IM peers as well as work more closely with financial services organisations to ensure that its solutions continue to develop to meet the evolving needs of their businesses.

Commenting on joining FIMA, Howard Travers, director, Formicary, says, “By its very nature, Group Chat is all about knowledge sharing and collaboration. Joining FIMA will bring Formicary even closer to the people at the forefront of Group Chat use within the financial services industry, enhancing how all parties work together to improve Chat uptake and ensure it continues to make a positive impact on their businesses.”

About Formicary Ltd

Formicary is an information technology company that specialises in building integrated applications/solutions to maximise business efficiency and streamline business processes for the Financial Services industry. Founded in 2000, Formicary brings together a world class team of talented and dedicated professionals with industry experience covering Unified Communications (particularly Persistent Group Chat), business integration, trading and risk systems integration and Cross Asset Trading applications. This knowledge, coupled with technical excellence ranging from legacy client/server to cut¬ting edge technologies, enables Formicary to offer innovative and sophisticated services and software to help clients improve their productivity and increase their return on investment. Formicary has offices in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific.

All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Formicary Integrates Persistent Group Chat for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Release 2 with Office SharePoint Server 2007

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 09:31:29 GMT

World first solution combines immediate information sharing with detailed knowledge of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server

London 22 June 2010 -Formicary, a provider of software solutions and systems integration (SI), has launched a solution which, for the first time, integrates Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 R2 Persistent Group Chat with Microsoft’s content management system, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. Integrating Formicary’s secure web-based Chat offering, WebChat, with Office SharePoint Server will combine the immediacy and information sharing culture of the chat room environment with the detailed knowledge held by the content management system.

Originally developed to extend the benefits of Group Chat to individuals not directly connected the OCS 2007 R2 Group Chat client, such as remote workers or third party customers, WebChat will bring a new dimension to how SharePoint is used by the business. For example, the improved access to information will help aiding decision making or improving customer service activity.

“Office SharePoint Server is designed to be a collaborative, information sharing environment”, says Philip Miller, Head of Intelligent Collaboration Group, Formicary, “but if there is no efficient means of actually communicating, then the application is not being fully optimised. Likewise, by bringing the knowledge of SharePoint into the chat room environment, it’s adding greater context to the discussions. In our experience, employees navigate away from applications like SharePoint once they have the specific information they were looking for. By hosting Group Chat discussions within the application, they are more likely to stay logged on and therefore utilise the benefits offered by the solution in the first place.”

Peter Culver, IT manager, Redburn Partners, a company already benefiting from the new application adds, “WebChat integration into SharePoint is key for us. SharePoint is likely to become a central technology for our organisation in the future and in our opinion, would not be complete without WebChat. Having WebChat integrated has added integrity to SharePoint and was identified early on as a true enabler in us securing user buy-in on the application. Without it, we really felt that we would have been scraping the surface of what SharePoint is capable of.”

For more information on Formicary’s integration of WebChat into SharePoint, please contact angeline.cheng@formicary.net

About Formicary Ltd

All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Coverage on FT : Understanding the pros and cons of unified communications

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 09:30:22 GMT

Philip Miller, global head of intelligent collaboration group, Formicary shares his personal view on Unified Communications with Financial Times. Click here to read more.

Formicary Joins BlackBerry ISV Alliance Program

Thu, 06 May 2010 09:07:30 GMT

Formicary solution connects Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Release 2 (R2) Group Chat with BlackBerry Enterprise Server

London, 7 May 2010 - Formicary, a provider of systems integration (SI) and software solutions , has joined the BlackBerry® Independent Software Vendor (ISV) Alliance Program as a Select Member. The program will provide Formicary with technical, sales and marketing support from RIM. Formicary plans to extend the benefits of Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Group Chat to BlackBerry® Enterprise Server customers through applications such as the recently launched Formicary Mobile Chat.

Formicary Mobile Chat is a secure real-time mobile enterprise application designed to specifically extend and complement the powerful features of Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Instant Messaging and Group Chat. Formicary Mobile Chat allows BlackBerry® smartphone users to remain fully connected with their teams using Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Group Chat to share and access information in a timely and efficient manner, thereby reducing phone usage and other costs, while on the move.

Instead of being restricted to generic operational settings, Formicary Mobile Chat can be customised to replicate an organisation’s existing Group Chat environment, which means that users are communicating via an interface which they are already familiar with. Formicary Mobile Chat releases the information sharing, topic-based, multi-party discussions associated with the Office Communications Server 2007 R2 desktop and applies them to the mobile environment - ensuring inclusive, secure communication at all times. Users can set their presence to show availability and view a list of chat rooms and active discussions to participate in. Information in the form of text, web-links or file attachments can be shared, while message history allows users to read previous chat messages.

Commenting, Howard Travers, business development director at Formicary says, “Joining the BlackBerry Alliance Program will provide Formicary with a new level of access to the BlackBerry ecosystem so that we can continue to develop intelligent collaborative solutions that are compatible with the BlackBerry Enterprise Solution. Formicary Mobile Chat for the BlackBerry platform provides mobile workers with a powerful and secure remote chat environment to help keep users one step ahead of their desk-bound rivals.”

ENDS

About Formicary Ltd

All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Pushing the Boundaries - Intelligent Collaboration

Wed, 28 Apr 2010 15:08:30 GMT

Click here to view and listen to the presentation by Gavin Adam, Strategic UC Consultant, Formicary Ltd at UC Expo 2010, London.

Formicary consultants head back to the classroom

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 11:16:31 GMT

Formicary joins Hackney-based pupil mentoring scheme

London 01 April 2010 - Formicary, the provider of premier Systems Integration (SI) and software solutions, has embarked on a pupil mentoring scheme at Shacklewell Primary School, Hackney. Formicary consultants currently participate in one-to-one weekly reading sessions with pupils.

The scheme which is co-ordinated through Inspire, the Education Business Partnership for Hackney, gives children additional reading practice which helps develop their comprehension skills and encourages an enjoyment of books, words and literature. It also raises the children’s self esteem, confidence and improves their social skills.

Ben Ramadan, senior systems engineer at Formicary who is participating in the scheme says, “The scheme appealed to me as it offers an opportunity to personally and directly make a difference to a child’s education. It’s been inspiring and extremely rewarding to see my pupil improve and develop their reading skills since I started working with them.”

Kevin Judson, senior systems engineer at Formicary adds, “Having participated in similar schemes previously I already knew how worthwhile they can be and so I jumped at the chance to join this initiative. In the short time that I’ve been visiting Shacklewell, I can already see my pupil becoming more confident both in his reading and in his social skills, which is tremendously rewarding.”

David Bridson, head teacher, Shacklewell Primary School concludes, “Many primary school children miss out on one-to-one reading support at home so the dedicated support and attention of a reading partner can make all the difference. Since working with Formicary, we’re seeing clear improvements in the reading ability of the pupils participating in the programme. The children really enjoy the Formicary visits and now positively look forward to their weekly reading sessions.”

As well as enabling Formicary to give something back into the local community, the mentoring programme is proving to be an innovative method of charitable giving beyond traditional fund-raising exercises and has become a motivating team bonding initiative.

About Formicary Ltd

Formicary is an information technology company that specialises in building integrated applications/solutions to maximise business efficiency and streamline business processes for the Financial Services industry. Founded in 2000, Formicary brings together a world class team of talented and dedicated professionals with industry experience covering Unified Communications (particularly Persistent Group Chat), business integration, trading and risk systems integration and Cross Asset Trading applications. This knowledge, coupled with technical excellence ranging from legacy client/server to cut¬ting edge technologies, enables Formicary to offer innovative and sophisticated services and software to help clients improve their productivity and increase their return on investment. Formicary is a Gold Certified Partner of Microsoft and a member of the BlackBerry® ISV Alliance Program. Formicary has offices in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific.

The BlackBerry and RIM families of related marks, images and symbols are the exclusive properties and trademarks of Research In Motion Limited. All other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Formicary marks 10 year anniversary with creation of new Chief Operating Office role

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:49:59 GMT

Greville Lucking promoted to Chief Operating Officer

London 16 March 2010 - Formicary, the provider of premier Systems Integration (SI) and software, has promoted Greville Lucking to the newly created position of Chief Operating Officer. The creation of the role reflects the ongoing year-on-year growth that Formicary has experienced since its formation 10 years ago.

The new role will see Greville head up UK operations, ensuring that the company continues to bring innovative and sophisticated services and software to the financial services industry.

Greville comments, “The past 10 years has seen huge changes in the financial sector, with the last 12 months proving the most challenging. As the financial sector emerges from the recession, many organisations are starting to re-assess their technology infrastructure. Formicary’s decade-long experience within this sector means that the company is ideally placed to help organisations ensure that their systems are fully optimised with maximum return on investment. We’re looking forward to the fresh challenges and opportunities that this will bring.”

Joseph Do, managing director, Formicary adds, “We’re delighted to be celebrating Formicary’s 10th year anniversary. Formicary has continued to grow despite the financial downturn and Greville has played a key role in the company’s success. This new position has been created to strengthen Formicary’s operational structure in the UK and support the company as it expands geographically.”

Greville will take up the new role on 1 April 2010.

About Formicary Ltd

All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Formicary Launches World's First Mobile Client for Microsoft OCS 2007 R2 Group Chat

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:09:53 GMT

Formicary Mobile Chat allows users to share and access information in a timely and efficient manner while on the move

London 10 March 2010 - Formicary, provider of premier Systems Integration (SI) and software solutions, today announces the launch of the world’s first secure real-time enterprise mobile client designed to specifically extend and complement the powerful features of Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Group Chat. Formicary Mobile Chat allows users to remain fully connected with their teams using Office Communications Server Group Chat to share and access information in a timely and efficient manner, reducing phone and email usage and their associated costs while on the move.

“Informal knowledge discussions are the fabric of every business”, says Gavin Adam, strategic Unified Communications consultant, Formicary, “But information has a limited time value. Receiving updates after everyone else makes the news old and essentially worthless. Additionally, in today’s regulatory environment where audit trails are becoming increasingly obligatory, capturing such communication chains can be difficult. Formicary Mobile Chat captures, formalises and shares information, ensuring that teams are always connected and compliant when on the move.”

Formicary Mobile Chat provides a consistent end user experience to Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Group Chat for a range of mobile devices including Blackberry, with additional mobile platforms soon to be announced. Instead of being restricted to generic operational settings, Mobile Chat can be customised to replicate an organisation’s existing Group Chat environment which means that users are communicating via an interface which they are already familiar with.

Mobile Chat releases the information sharing, topic-based, multi-party discussions associated with the Office Communications Server desktop and applies them to the mobile environment - ensuring inclusive, secure communication at all times. Users can set their presence to show availability and view a list of chat rooms and active discussions to participate in. Information in the form of text, web-links or file attachments can be shared, while message history allows users to read previous chat messages.

“Microsoft is pleased to see Formicary’s continued efforts to support use of Group Chat in Office Communications Server 2007 R2,” said Yancey Smith, director of Unified Communications product management at Microsoft Corp. “Team conversations are a vital part of information sharing in any business and Formicary is making it possible to extend the conversation to workers, even while on the go.”

For organisations looking to extend Group Chat into the mobile environment, please contact info@formicary.net for further information and demonstration.

ENDS

About Formicary Ltd

Formicary is an information technology company that specialises in building integrated applications/solutions to maximise business efficiency and streamline business processes for the Financial Services industry. Founded in 2000, Formicary brings together a world class team of talented and dedicated professionals with industry experience covering Unified Communications (particularly Persistent Group Chat), business integration, trading and risk systems integration and Cross Asset Trading applications. This knowledge, coupled with technical excellence ranging from legacy client/server to cut¬ting edge technologies, enables Formicary to offer innovative and sophisticated services and software to help clients improve their productivity and increase their return on investment. Formicary is a Gold Certified Partner of Microsoft and an alliance member of RIM. Formicary has offices in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific.

All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Optimising Group Chat

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 11:54:24 GMT

If chat's not your lot, you should reconsider, advises Formicary's Howard Travers

As featured on Finance on Windows Magazine, Spring 2010

With migration to new platforms such as Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS) driving its adoption, persistent group chat is no longer the preserve of large investment banks. Combining the immediacy of instant messaging (IM) with the multi-party outreach offered by e-mail, persistent group chat can bring huge value to an organisation and its employees both in terms of efficiencies, improved communication and greater cohesion all round.

As a result of this, more individuals are starting to experiment with it – with varying degrees of success. While the technology is an extremely powerful application, most don’t realise its full potential. The following simple steps give a flavour of how to optimise group chat for added impact, beyond just basic IM.

For the full article, click here.

Formicary Simplifies Instant Messaging Compliance With New Group Chat Offerings

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:38:54 GMT

ChatSeer Exporter and Ethical Wall ease compliance headaches of persistent Group Chat

London, 25 February 2010... Formicary, a specialist technology integration company for the financial services industry, has strengthened its Chat compliance offering with two new products which complement its existing ChatSeer application. ChatSeer Exporter and Formicary Ethical Wall have been developed to make it easier and more cost effective to ensure that the growing number of Chat discussions occurring around large organisations don't slip through the compliance net.

Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 R2 simplifies how people and groups communicate with each other. However, as with email communication, there are very strict corporate and legal reasons on how these conversations are conducted and managed.

For example, MiFID stipulates that organisations must have a record of all communications ‘readily accessible' and also kept in a state so that they can ‘not to be manipulated or altered'. But with hundreds of conversations happening simultaneously in a typical large organisation such as a finance house, this can be a challenge.

To make it easier for organisations to achieve and manage this compliance in line with their own specific needs, Formicary has added ChatSeer Exporter to its existing ChatSeer offering.

ChatSeer Exporter seamlessly connects Instant Messaging (IM), Group Chat and Microsoft Office Live Meeting systems to a legally compliant long term storage device from which they can be retrieved if required. The stored data provides information containing who said what, when, to whom and who has access to this information in accordance with the requirements set forth by the respective financial governing bodies including the SEC, NASD, FSA, MiFID and Sarbanes Oxley.

For organisations who want to include the ability to search on the messages held in the long term storage device, ChatSeer Portal is designed to ease discovery and investigation requests for the next generation of IM, Group Chat and web conferencing applications. ChatSeer's powerful search mechanisms mean that it can search through huge volume of messages in an incredibly short space of time. For instance, ChatSeer can search though 250 million messages in just five seconds while competitive products have been known to take hours to perform similar searches.

Additionally, unlike competitive offerings which translate IM and Group Chat into email format before storing, ChatSeer and ChatSeer Exporter save messages in their native format so that accurate reconstructions of full multiparty IM and Group Chat conversations can be quickly and easily conducted.

As well as complying with storage and retrieval aspects of regulations, there are occasions where two participants or groups of participants should not be able communicate with each other, such as discussions between investment traders and market researchers. These situations were referred previously as Chinese Walls and now known as Ethical Walls.

Formicary Ethical Wall has been developed to segregate users in order to avoid conflict of interest issues. This segregation would be based on some known criteria, such as an HR people management database, and would prevent the communication between parties via OCS and in particular Group Chat conversations.

Commenting, Howard Travers, business development director, Formicary says, "The pace of adoption of Microsoft's Office Communications Server (OCS) is accelerating. But simply having the right infrastructure in place to facilitate Instant Messaging and Group Chat discussions is only part of the story. Organisations need to be able to manage the ever growing number of conversations, not just to ensure compliance but to reap maximum benefits from the technology. The Formicary products are designed to help them protect the technology in the most appropriate way to meet their specific requirements."

About Formicary Ltd

Formicary is an information technology company that specialises in building integrated applications/solutions to maximise business efficiency and streamline business processes for the Financial Services industry. Founded in 2000, Formicary brings together a world class team of talented and dedicated professionals with industry experience covering Unified Communications (particularly Persistent Group Chat), business integration, trading and risk systems integration and Cross Asset Trading applications. This knowledge, coupled with technical excellence ranging from legacy client/server to cutting edge technologies, enables Formicary to offer innovative and sophisticated services and software to help clients improve their productivity and increase their return on investment. Formicary has offices in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific.

All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Formicary showcases collaborative communication solutions at UC Expo, Stand 704, March 10 - 11, Olympia, London

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:40:44 GMT

London 25 February 2010 - Formicary, the provider of premier Systems Integration (SI) and software solutions, will be showcasing its collaborative communication solutions at Stand 704 at UC Expo, the UK's leading Business Enterprise Communications Event.

Formicary’s products are designed to specifically extend and complement the powerful features of Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 Release 2 (R2) Group Chat and are widely regarded as mission critical applications by many of the world’s largest financial institutions. The latest of these, Formicary Mobile Chat can keep users fully connected with their teams while on the move using Group Chat to share and access information in a timely and efficient manner.

Persistent Group Chat is no longer the preserve of the financial services sector, but is starting to be adopted by other industries who are recognising how the communications technology is transforming how people work and communicate.

Visitors to the Formicary stand will be able to explore how Group Chat can be optimised to meet their specific business requirements in order to maximise efficiency, streamline processes and improve productivity.

Gavin Adam, strategic Unified Communications consultant, Formicary, will also be presenting a paper at 3:10pm on Thursday 11th March at UC Expo which will explain how Persistent Group Chat can transform the way businesses work especially when it is integrated into the desktop, made available on the mobile or via the web allowing employees to stay connected to work in real-time from anywhere at any time.

About Formicary Ltd

All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Formicary Launches Japanese Language Website

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:46:16 GMT

To strengthen its Asian operation, Formicary, an information technology company specialising in integrated solutions for the financial services industry has launched a Japanese language version of its website (www.formicary.net/jp). The new website will make it easier for customers, prospects and partners operating in the region to find out more about the efficiency benefits that Formicary’s intelligent collaboration, trading and risk solutions bring to large financial institutions.

Commenting on the new website, Joseph Do, managing director, Formicary, says, “As a leading centre for financial services, Japan is an important market for Formicary. We’re already operating in the region and the local language website is testament to our continued commitment to it. At Formicary, we pride ourselves on the positive relationships we have with our customers and partners and believe that this local language website is another means of connecting with them to strengthening these relationships further.”

The top 2010 risks: OpRisk's survey of the challenges ahead

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:46:02 GMT

Author: Patrick Blum | 01 Dec 2009

The year ahead looks set to be one of the busiest ever for operational risk practitioners, as they struggle to meet regulators' increased expectations and fight rising financial crime with fewer resources. OpRisk & Compliance outlines the top 10 challenges readers and their firms will face in 2010.

No 9 Internal Communications Risk

One of the biggest areas of rick in 2010 will come from the need to adopt unified communication tools within the financial institutions, says Howard Travers, business development director at Formicary, a specialist technology integration and software company for the financial industry.

Read the full article at OpRisk & Compliance.

Consumer revolution: leading the enterprise

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 18:32:46 GMT

Keep up with the communications evolution with a unified communications network, says Philip Miller

As featured on Finance on Windows Magazine, Autumn 2009

In many ways, financial institutions have more data and information flowing across them than any other industry. Communication of some sort occurs every second of every day relating to every member of staff and every customer connected with an organisation. Whether it’s facts and figures such as the latest trading prices constantly being updated and shared; adjustments to interest rates being made to accounts or the millions of calls handled by a retail bank’s call centre.

Recognising this, financial institutions are flocking in droves towards Microsoft’s Office Communications Server (OCS) to provide them with the infrastructure for real-time enterprise communications. But simply having the right infrastructure in place is only part of the story.

As communications continues to evolve at pace, keeping up with it is a time-consuming and costly pursuit that can, for large banks, run into millions of pounds annually. Gone is the old world order where a single e-mail address, phone number and IM account were the primary means of communication.

Instead, consider the ever-growing ways in which the tens of thousands of personnel within a single organisation can be contacted. Each employee will have assigned to them a landline number, a mobile phone number, e-mail address, SKYPE address, IM address and so the list continues to grow with each new technology development. This creates multiple channels by which to reach just one person. When you factor that in, this will be replicated tens of thousands of times for every employee, not to mention the non-human generated traffic darting from one computer to the next, the pressure on the technology infrastructure is immense.

Of course one of the attractions of Microsoft OCS is that it can make it easier to facilitate each of these different means of communication, but just installing this new service won’t transform how a business operates overnight. Personnel still need to be able to trust the source of the information, they need to trust that nobody else has accessed it, and they need to trust that it complies with all necessary regulations – from Sarbanes Oxley to MiFID.

At Formicary, we are already working with top tier banking institutions to create a unified communications network that integrates every communications related element of the organisation and offers greater security and reliance than if multiple technologies were to be layered and interconnected across the business.

For the full article, click here.

Firms under pressure to improve price and trading data quality

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:45:01 GMT

by David Benyon, OpRisk & Compliance

Operational and market risks caused by pricing errors and increased regulatory pressure are encouraging firms to pay much more attention to price and trading data.

“Over the past two years interest in putting in place better systems and controls has become more apparent,” says Alexander Millington, director of technology and data integration vendor Formicary’s trading and risk technology group.

Read the full article at OpRisk & Compliance.

Formicary Announce Murex Systems Integration Partnership

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:19:21 GMT

Formicary joins the Murex Partnership Programme

London 11 November 2009 - Formicary, a specialist integration company for the financial services industry, and Murex, the leading provider of integrated trading, risk management and processing solutions, have today announced that Formicary is joining the Murex Partnership Programme as a Business Partner.

The Murex Partnership Programme has been designed to strengthen the service offering delivered by systems integrators around the Murex platform. It builds a collaborative framework, taking existing relationships a step further through a higher level of shared best practices, training and certification.

The partnership between the two companies acknowledges the implementation and integration work that Formicary has been doing with Murex for many years.

“Murex is one of the most sophisticated cross asset, end-to-end trading platforms on the market, comments Joseph Do, managing director Formicary. “We’re delighted at today’s announcement which confirms Formicary’s position as an expert authority on the platform. It gives customers and prospects the reassurance that they are working with an organisation which, not only has a proven track record in working with Murex, but can offer the most up-to-date and efficient consulting, integration, implementation and application maintenance services around the platform.”

About Formicary Ltd

Formicary is an information technology company that specialises in building integrated applications/solutions to maximise business efficiency and streamline business processes for the Financial Services industry. Founded in 2000, Formicary brings together a world class team of talented and dedicated professionals with industry experience covering Unified Communications (particularly Persistent Group Chat), business integration, trading and risk systems integration and Cross Asset Trading applications. This knowledge, coupled with technical excellence ranging from legacy client/server to cutting edge technologies, enables Formicary to offer innovative and sophisticated services and software to help clients improve their productivity and increase their return on investment. Formicary has offices in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific.

Formicary Adds Focus on Back Office Requirements to Pricing Verification Solution

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 11:29:20 GMT

by Virginie O'Shea, A-Team Group

Technology integration solution vendor Formicary has released the latest version of its price verification solution, RiskSeer, with a view to improving its offering for the back office as well as those users in the front office. The vendor has traditionally pitched its solution at consumers of market data focused on pricing in the front office but regulatory change and market dynamics have meant that pricing data is equally as important to the back office, explains Alexander Millington, director of Formicary’s Trading and Risk Technology Group.

Read the full article at Risk & Regulation IT.

RiskSeer - Transform and Improve Risk Management Processes

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:33:43 GMT

Latest application pulls together market and trade data to provide an accurate independent pricing verification platform on which to base risk decisions

London, 15 October 2009 - Formicary, a specialist technology integration company for the financial services industry, has launched the latest version of RiskSeer - its integrated Independent Price Verification application. Designed to transform and improve risk management processes, RiskSeer centralises market and trade data to facilitate accurate and timely decision making by the risk, product control and finance units of financial institutions. Riskseer’s core data consolidation features also provide significant market data cost savings to its users.

Building on the success of the original application, the new version of RiskSeer features:-

• Extended Securities Coverage
• Position valuation calculation and tolerance check
• Rules-based price averaging from multiple raw data sources
• Ability to integrate custom pricing models
• Extended market data feed handling for Reuters, Bloomberg and MarkIT

As management become increasingly focused on price and risk analysis, market valuations and measures of exposure to risk, the need for a means of consolidating pricing, valuation and risk data is a growing priority for organisations.

RiskSeer automatically pulls together data from multiple price sources and is able to feed multiple price destinations one, consolidated view – organised by any available data attribute, such as instrument type, currency, index, or counterparty.

The application enables authorised users to access, manipulate and quality check trade / pricing data and export the information on demand. Product controllers, risk and finance personnel can all request the market value of positions from an individual asset, book, regional or global perspective at any given time.

RiskSeer’s configurable, rules-based workflow will automate the distribution of consistent, approved pricing, ensuring clear and accurate reporting within a bank’s approved audit process. Full built-in exception handling ensures any market data discrepancies are identified to the user as soon as they occur.

The ability of RiskSeer to verify prices allows for a more robust delivery of clean, risk-approved market data across multiple systems, providing a consistent foundation for calculation of intraday and end of day profit & loss and risk. Full auditing and reporting streamlines end-of-day and month-end processing.

Alexander Millington, director of Formicary’s Trading and Risk Technology Group, said:
“Financial institutions are under greater pressure than ever before to manage risk and make profitable decisions, but these can only be based on the accuracy of the information their teams have at their disposal at any one time. Accurate Front Office market valuations play a critical role in the risk management process. Many financial institutions have created their own in-house systems for price verification, but these don’t always show the full picture. RiskSeer is different in that it brings together data from multiple price sources to multiple price destinations, working alongside existing trading and market data applications to create a transparent, integrated workspace that eases every aspect of the valuation and risk process.”

www.formicary.net/riskseer

2nd Enterprise Group Chat Forum for Persistent Group Chat Users

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 08:45:07 GMT

Led by global tier one financial institutions, Enterprise Group Chat Forum allows IT executives to discuss Persistent Group Chat strategies.

London, 7 October, 2009 -- Formicary Ltd, an independent IT consultancy company, is hosting a second Enterprise Group Chat Forum aimed at end users with a commitment to Unified Communications and in particular, persistent Group Chat. Building on the success of an inaugural event held in May 2009, the forum will provide an opportunity for persistent group chat enthusiasts to share experiences and openly discuss future developments of the technology with a guest speaker from Microsoft Corp. The event will be held on 29th October 2009 in London.

A common solution used by many of the world's major Investment Banks, Persistent Group Chat promotes mobility and agility whilst allowing businesses to organize discussions in persistent communication which improves communication flow. For many existing Group Chat users, it is a proven solution that has the ability to reduce the number of emails, phone calls and loud verbal discussions on a trading floor and other business environments.

The first Enterprise Group Chat Forum included IT executives representing organisations such as The Royal Bank of Scotland, UBS, Deutsche Bank, Barclays Capital, J.P. Morgan Securities, Nomura Corporation, West LB, Commerzbank, LCH. Clearnet and BGC Partners. The forum is also open to any organisation that is interested to find out more about benefits of persistent group chat and how it will fit into their business environment.

Speaker at the first forum, Amit Gupta, senior program manager, Unified Communications Group of Microsoft, Corp commented, "It's great to have customers talking openly and sharing their views on persistent group chat. The whole principal behind Group Chat is to facilitate easier communication. Formicary's Enterprise Group Chat Forum does just that - open up communication. As well hearing about any group chat developments in our Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Release 2, the forum allows attendees to share knowledge and learn from the experiences of their peers. As the agenda is set by the group's participants, attendees can be assured that the forum will more than likely cover subjects that are pertinent to them. Judging on the success of the previous event, we are in for some lively, constructive discussion and debate. We look forward to continuing to work closely with Formicary on further group chat developments in our Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Release 2".

To join the upcoming Enterprise Group Chat Forum, please email angeline.cheng@formicary.net.

About Enterprise Group Chat Forum
Enterprise Group Chat Forum is an independent forum created to bring together organisations of a similar commitment to Enterprise Instant Messaging and Group Chat. By reviewing successful solutions and implementations, it is hoped members will be able to share ideas/concerns and provide a clear voice to the Industry with regard to the future of Persistent Group Chat, IM and Unified Communication Strategies.

All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Formicary announces the launch of Formicary Connect? to facilitate real-time integration between leading trading platforms

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 09:15:17 GMT

London, 18 September 2009 – Formicary, a specialist integration company for the financial services industry, today announces the launch of Formicary Connect™ (formerly EPiX Financial) to simplify how financial institutions integrate leading trading platforms, including Murex™, Summit FT™ and Calypso™ with other aspects of the business. Comprising a suite of suite of standardised software components, Formicary Connect quickly and cost effectively connects highly complex systems to ensure a smooth exchange of business critical trade and data across the organisation.

Formicary Connect was developed in response to the needs of financial institutions to improve information flow and knowledge sharing across the business. It eliminates the complexity associated with integrating large disjointed systems, such as those commonly used by banks or investment houses, leaving the organisation with more time and resource to focus on actually running the business.

One such institution, Mitsubishi UFJ Securities International (MUSI), the international capital markets arm of the Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, used Formicary Connect to install a new Murex trading system.

Formicary’s out-of-the box connectors effectively separate the business layer from the technical architecture, relegating lower-level connectivity issues to the background. The focus lies on ensuring a bilateral data flow of cross-asset trades and data between multiple trading environments. The use of these dedicated connectors dramatically speeds up and simplifies migration tasks and saves on ongoing maintenance. Connectors can be deployed as stand-alone modules or assembled in packages serving multiple interfaces.

Joseph Do, managing director, Formicary, comments, “Financial institutions are under greater pressure than ever before to operate efficiently and effectively. They shouldn’t be wasting valuable time and resources trying to understand the complex plumbing required to integrate the various IT systems in place. Instead, they need to remain focused on they what they do best – namely operating a profitable and successful business. As such, we developed Formicary to remove the integration headache and create a cohesive, efficient working environment.”

Formicary’s supported bilateral connectors include Murex™, Summit™, Calypso™ and unilateral connectors include in-house applications, DTCC, Markit Wire (formerly Swapswire), Fidessa, SunGard Martini, Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters advantages.

The Next Great Leap - Group Chat, Finance on Windows Autumn 2009

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 15:07:27 GMT

FINANCIAL FIRMS ARE LEADING THE WORLD IN THE ADOPTION OF GROUP CHAT TECHNOLOGY, SAYS HOWARD TRAVERS

As featured on Finance on Windows Magazine, Autumn 2009

The financial sector has always been one of the pioneers of new technology, especially in the realm of communications. It isn’t hard to see why: financial markets move rapidly and vast sums of money can be gained or lost by responding quickest to a particular shift, so having access to great information and the ability to share it instantly with colleagues or customers is an obvious advantage. Yet, at the same time, the sector has been concerned that one to one IM would be misused for non business related work or that sensitive information could be shared in an industry that has always been relatively tightly regulated. Thus, although fast communication is vital, finding ways to share information across globally dispersed groups for business purposes and give the ability to provide an audit trail of who said what, to whom and when has been paramount.

Banks and other financial firms have been using instant messaging (IM) technology for some time now, essentially ever since Group Chat became available and it became possible for software to record conversations, thus ensuring that compliance requirements could be met – obviously in any regulated business, it’s impossible to allow employees to share sensitive information in a format that will disappear into the ether as soon as the application is closed down. Forward-looking businesses, focused on speed of collaboration, flow and execution, have gone way beyond the stereotypical management view of five years ago, that ‘IM & Chat’ was simply about staff gossiping and wasting time, when they should be doing real work.

But Group Chat – the next generation of IM, if you like – goes far beyond the simple exchange of information that is most executives’ perception of this kind of technology. When Microsoft acquired the Group Chat technology as a result of its purchase of Parlano back in 2007, for which I formerly worked, and embedded it into Office Communications Server, I don’t believe many people within the company were really aware of the potential impact of the deal. I really believe that this kind of technology will change the way all organisations work, not just financial services, in a fundamental way.

Offering Group Chat as part of OCS made it more accessible by reducing the cost of entry. But, because of the scope of Microsoft’s offering, there is still a degree of confusion over what Group Chat is, and what it can do. Group Chat & IM has been, and still largely is, viewed as an internal communications tool, but the real transformation comes when it starts to be used for communication outside the organisation as well as within. The big value add for Group Chat – the missing link if you like – is the ability to structure chat rooms across the entire organisation, teams and projects internally. The next natural step is to go online externally, perhaps logon to your company’s internal OCS world while away from the office, and to get all the things you’d have in a thick client in a Group Chat Web environment. I believe the process will be akin to the early development of e-mail, which, after all, started off as a tool for communication within organisations. These networks were linked up and federated, and eventually we had the global Internet. Naturally I believe IM is going to federate in the same way.

For the full article, click here.

Risky Business - Finance on Windows Autumn 2009

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 14:31:01 GMT

The events of the last eighteen months are a graphic example of what happens when financial institutions get risk management wrong. Lindsay James explores the technology that is allowing financial institutions to steer clear of any unwanted surprises.

As featured on Finance on Windows Magazine, Autumn 2009

“The importance of solid risk processes has become paramount,” said Alexander Millington, director of the trading and risk technology group at Formicary. “Financial institutions must have a complete real-time understanding of every element of the risk they are undertaking to ensure they can maintain and grow their business with the approval of the new and changing regulatory environment that they now operate in.”

To achieve this real-time understanding of risk, firms need tools, methodology, and processes in place to collect, measure, and monitor enterprise-wide risk exposure. This isn’t straightforward. Much recent turmoil points not to a failure of risk management as such, but to a lack of understanding about the discipline and how it should be applied. The financial crisis has highlighted the dangers of managing risk types in isolated silos, each with its own set of tools, applications and models. Much of the failure around risk management stemmed from the inability to have a more holistic view and understanding the interdependencies of risk across different lines of business.

“We see the need to integrate existing systems being a top priority,” says Millington. “The ability to share information across a merged organisation or to leverage the efficiency of one particular system is going to be a technology mantra, for 2009 and beyond. Providing systems integration in an insightful, efficient way is the bedrock on which accurate and coherent data provision and analysis is built. There is little appetite, or budget, in the industry for expensive, complex and protracted wholesale system replacement projects – the panacea of ‘one system fits all’ very rarely exists. Rather, leveraging the competencies of individual systems and integrating across them delivers not only the benefits of centralised reporting and analysis, but also the ability to share efficiencies and optimisations across the organisation.”

To read the entire article, click here.

Formicary WebChat - Formicary leads the way in delivering Group Chat to remote users, clients and partners

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 21:40:32 GMT

http://www.formicary.net/webchat

Secure web-based, Formicary WebChat brings Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Group Chat to on-the-road employees, vendors, clients and business partners

[LONDON, United Kingdom] — August 4, 2009 —Formicary Limited, a Microsoft Corp. gold certified partner, has announced the launch of the world’s first secure web-based, real-time reach chat client designed specifically to extend and complement the powerful features of Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Release 2 Group Chat.

Until now, organisations were severely limited in their ability to extend Group Chat to reach-only users, i.e. people who are unable to access the Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Group Chat client. “Group Chat delivers efficient group information sharing and discussions by allows users to have topic-based, multi-party discussions that persist over time,” explained Philip Miller, Director of Intelligent Collaboration Group, Formicary Ltd. “Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Group Chat brought several new features including the ability to federate the Office Communications Server installations of different companies together for business to business collaboration and provide VPN-less access for mobile users. Now with our WebChat, we further extend Office Communications Server Group Chat capabilities to users that require web-based access only.”

Formicary WebChat addresses this increasingly important business requirement by extending Group Chat capabilities to internal and external users. Delivering a fully interactive environment and supporting persistent contextual history, Formicary WebChat can be accessed via any major web browser and does not require ActiveX or any other installation - making it ideal for secure, real time online discussions from anywhere and at any time. Additionally, Formicary WebChat can be fully customised according to individual business needs and features the same functionality as Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Group Chat client.

Supplied as a complete web based client or as a modular component tool kit, Formicary WebChat can be embedded within individual portals or used as a Group Chat web client to improve business relationships by providing better service and faster response times. "Formicary WebChat was developed following a request from one of our Investment Banking clients and due to demand, is now also available for integration into portals including Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007,” continued Philip Miller.

Commenting on Formicary’s involvement with Microsoft, Jon Morrow, senior program manager for the Unified Communications Group – Partner Engineering at Microsoft Corp. said: “Formicary has been working diligently with Microsoft to ensure smooth client migration to the new Group Chat feature in Office Communications Server 2007 R2 and we are pleased that they have looked into extending the feature to reach-only users, both internal and external, which will help to further improve productivity by helping organisations build stronger, more valuable relationships from the efficiencies that Group Chat provides."

Formicary’s long successful involvement with Parlano's MindAlign (Microsoft acquired Parlano in 2007) has earned them the status of “go-to” partner for implementation and upgrade from MindAlign to Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Group Chat. From these long term relationships, Formicary has amassed substantial design and development expertise including compliance monitoring software tools, add on bots/agents to enhance user experience, and deployment, migration, and maintenance services.

For customers looking to migrate from their current environment or implement the new Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Group Chat, Formicary WebChat can also be used to enhance migration and extend the value of Group Chat..– please contact info@formicary.net for further information and demonstration.

About Formicary

http://www.formicary.net/webchat

Formicary Attains Microsoft Gold Certified Partner status

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 15:21:48 GMT

[LONDON, United Kingdom] — 27 July, 2009 —Formicary Limited has achieved the highest level of partner recognition from Microsoft by being awarded the coveted Gold Certified Partner status in two core competencies: Information Worker Solutions and Unified Communications Solutions. The status was granted as recognition of Formicary’s achievements in product technology and customer satisfaction.

According to Microsoft, “Microsoft Gold Certified Partners are our elite business partners. They have the knowledge, skills and commitment to help (customers) implement technology solutions that match your exact business needs. To gain accreditation and the right to use our official logo, all Gold Certified Partners must employ Microsoft Certified Professionals and have at least one Microsoft Competencies.”

The Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Program provides a way for existing and potential customers to identify companies that have proven their commitment and expertise in one or more specialised areas when delivering Microsoft technologies. Microsoft Gold Certified Partners need to meet a far higher set of criteria for each category, including enhanced certification and a portfolio of real-world customer references, and are thus identified as the most skilled partners in specific solution areas.

Formicary has been awarded Microsoft Gold Certified Partner status in two competencies: Information Worker Solutions, in recognition of Formicary’s expertise, experience and client endorsement in developing integration solutions base around Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007; and in Unified Communications Solutions where Formicary is an expert in Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Group Chat solution.

Commenting upon this major achievement, Tim Bilbrough, Director of Formicary’s Technology Services Group said:
“Although Formicary has a track record in delivering complex Microsoft solutions to some of the largest organisations in the financial services sector, it is extremely gratifying to know that our client base has endorsed our expertise and helped us achieve the highest levels of recognition from Microsoft. This award will enable potential customers to further qualify Formicary as a leading specialist provider of proven high-quality solutions.”

Formicary WebChat, a client web access solution for Office Communications Server 2007 R2 also recently passed highly stringent Microsoft platform testing, conducted independently by VeriTest (a testing service of Lionbridge Technologies). “Formicary WebChat is a leading edge technology designed specifically to extend and complement the powerful features of Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 Group Chat, making it the world’s first secure web-based real-time reach group chat client”, explained Philip Miller, Director of Formicary’s Intelligent Collaboration Group.

The VeriTest tests ensure compliance with Microsoft platform requirements under a wide range of quality assurance parameters including security, reliability, data integrity, etc. “In accordance with our continuous partnership process with Microsoft, Formicary WebChat has passed two crucial Microsoft Platform Tests for Hosted Solutions,” continued Philip. “The Lionbridge VeriTest service has been ranked as the world's number one Outsourced Testing and QA provider for two consecutive years, and in passing the Windows Server 2008 and Platform Managed Code tests we continue to ensure that quality is the key differentiator for our clients.”

"Given the number of choices in software products in the market today, customers need to quickly learn who is committed to integration and testing," added Tim. "They need to be assured that a solution provider has a policy of platform testing and integration. With our long-term and strategic commitments to Microsoft platforms, Formicary has clearly demonstrated that our solutions are robust, credible and have delivered real business benefits to our ever increasing client base."

Case Study: Successful business expansion thanks to smooth implementation of Murex? using Formicary? Connect

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 08:56:28 GMT

“Formicary provided a first class team to support MUSI in their implementation of a major new trading system. Formicary’s level of commitment and dedication to the task ensure the highest level of excellence, while also being one of the most dependable and supportive teams we have worked with. Formicary have succeeded in delivering their promise of full quality solutions”.

Stephen Irons , Vice President, Technology, Mitsubishi UFJ Securities International plc, June 2009

*Formicary Connect was formerly known as EPiX Financial

Company Profile

Mitsubishi UFJ Securities International plc (“MUSI”) is the English-incorporated European hub of the global securities and investment banking business of Mitsubishi UFJ Securities Co. Ltd, which itself is part of the Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, the biggest financial institution in the world. MUSI is based in the City of London with branches in Frankfurt, Milan and Zurich. It is active in most areas of the international capital markets, with specialities in debt, equity, derivatives and structured products.

·
Background

The team’s essential requirements were the ability to view a list of open positions and update the market value from any number of pricing sources, either from market data vendors such as Bloomberg and Reuters or using internal pricing sources. Authorised users needed to be able to access, manipulate and validate all data and export it to the trading system in order to calculate an accurate value of the bank’s P&L.

·
Solution

In 2008, post Mitsubishi Securities International (MSI) and UFJ merger in London, the organisation’s business plan was then to focus on Business Expansion. This expansion was to be achieved by increasing current trading volumes across the major business areas, as well as the introduction of new trading business such as Inflation Trading and hybrid products. To support this expansion, a project called MUSIC-IR( MUSI Corporate Infrastructure Reinforcement) was initiated. One of the objectives for the project is to investigate various strategic options and implement a strategic platform.

·
Business Requirement

The ultimate aim of this project is to implement a cross-asset front to back trading functionality within a highly integrated operational infrastructure. The focus throughout will be on delivering key improvements to the business, which included:

• Cross-asset deals capture system

• Data warehousing for reference static, market and transaction data

• Near-time risk and PL functionality

• User-interactive valuation and risk platform

• Optimal STP, front to back

• Consolidate business functions and processes within a single strategic system

Technically, the new system needs to provide:

• De-coupled architecture

• Support Rapid Change

• Transparent, Flexible and Scaleable Architecture

Solution & Approach

Together with the team led by internal MUSI staff, Formicary helped to deliver a strategic system plan which included evaluating third party vendors, internal systems, processes and functions. The new plan outlined a strategic system for supporting the cross-assets deal capturing systems that support STP front to back, which is Murex.

In order to avoid disruption of the existing day-to-day business activities during the implementation, a phased roll-out approach was deployed to provide evolution changes to the existing architecture landscape at MUSI. To realise this vision, Formicary Connect was deployed. Formicary Connect enables disparate systems to connect and communicate using a suite of interoperable components consisting of plug-in modules and connectors. These can be used alone or in combination to route and transform the data flow. This in turn automates and simplifies the flow of trade data reducing the amount of manual input and associated costs.

The project is phased over two years to individual business units. At each phase, all existing trades are migrated, reconciled, legacy systems are decommissioned and new processes and overnight batch runs are introduced.

Achievements

MUSI now has a single front to back cross-asset trading platform that is seamlessly integrated with key existing systems. The architecture allows any of these systems to be modified or replaced without creating a major impact to the business. This is a two years project and the key achievements of Formicary are:

• Hundreds of thousands of trades have been migrated

• Integrated platform for the Exotic Group to develop customised pricing models in any technology e.g. Microsoft .NET or Sun Java

• Consolidated Market data hub for accurate Profit & Loss reporting

• Murex has been rolled out to Hong Kong and other satellite offices globally

• Globally there are hundreds of users working off this platform

• Built custom interface to externally price a new class of exotic instruments, equity hybrids using Flex API

About Formicary

Formicary is an information technology solutions company that specialises in building integrated applications to maximise business efficiency and streamline business processes for the Financial Services industry.

Founded in 2000, Formicary brings together a world class team of talented and dedicated professionals with industry experience and understanding covering front to back office in equities, fixed income and derivatives.· This knowledge, coupled with technical excellence ranging from legacy client/server to cutting edge technologies, enables Formicary to offer innovative and sophisticated solutions to help clients improve their productivity and increase their return on investment.

Formicary has offices in Europe, North America and Australia. For more information, please visit·www.formicary.net·or contact us at·info@formicary.net

Risk Analysis and Reporting

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 10:12:57 GMT

Know Your Risk

RISK ANALYSIS IS FUNDAMENTAL TO EFFECTIVE RISK MANAGEMENT. JACQUI GRIFFITHS ASKS HOW FINANCIAL FIRMS CAN ENSURE THEY GET IT RIGHT FROM THE START

As featured on Finance on Windows Magazine, Spring 2009

Financial organisations face a paradoxical situation when it comes to risk – they need to minimise it, but they can’t grow without it. In today’s economic climate, it is more important than ever to identify, measure and minimise risk in order to reap its attendant rewards. Alexander Millington, head of risk management software at Formicary, explains: “Financial organisations thrive on taking risk, but understanding and giving clarity to that risk is more important than ever in a complex trading environment.”

However, banks face many challenges in accurately assessing the risks they face, and there is consensus among the experts that risk analysis methods have previously fallen short. “How you value the risk is obviously key to determining the size of the reward,” says Michael Bush, head of product management at Business Control Solutions. “But how do you value risk that only has a ‘potential’ to take place?”

“Margin pressure in core business has driven many organisations to seek greater return in the capital markets, fundamentally carrying a greater risk to their business,” says Nigel Lee, chief commercial officer at Financial Architects (FinArch). “A failure to correctly assess risk and risk-adjust business performance has exposed these organisations, their customers and their shareholders.”

“Financial organisations are still searching for the appropriate balance,” adds Chris Moxon, chief executive officer of Methodware. “The herd mentality prevalent in many large financial organisations, driven by pressure to maximise profits, has produced a bias to ‘reward’ in spite of the associated risks. Controlsapplied in recent years have not been effective, and some banks have focused more on controlling small fraud exposures than managing advanced credit instruments or systemic institutional issues. Clearly, this needs to change.”

That change is on the horizon, according to Adrian Maconick, director of Finsbury Solutions: “We are in the middle of the biggest banking crisis in my lifetime,” he says. “This will trigger a complete re-evaluation of risk management which will cover the regulators, the role of government, the role and status of risk management in the organisation, the measurement of risk and the systems used to provide risk management information.”

Read the rest of the article here

Compliance Solution built for Group Chat feature of Microsoft OCS 2007 R2

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 10:11:21 GMT

See What You Say

by Howard Travers

As featured on Finance on Windows Magazine, Spring 2009

WHEN IT COMES TO IM AND GROUP CHAT THERE ARE MANY IMPORTANT ISSUES TO CONSIDER, ESPECIALLY IN REGULATORY AND COMPLIANCE RISK.

The use of instant messaging (IM) is growing at an exponential rate and with the recent release of Microsoft’s Unified Communications (UC) suite, Office Communications Server (OCS) R2 2007, this is set to continue. While IM technologies have simplified and replaced e-mail for one-to-one conversations, chat is the natural extension for the replacement of group meetings, and a major new feature in OCS R2 2007 Group Chat. Internet relay chat has been around for years, but the breakthrough came when innovative organisations like UBS extended that protocol to develop a persistent group chat product, resulting in a separate company called Parlano and the MindAlign product. Microsoft acquired MindAlign in 2007, and its adoption by many of the world’s largest financial institutions has shaped the functionality of Microsoft’s Group Chat, as many of those companies now plan to move to the UC platform.

When I was sales manager of Parlano in Europe, CXOs often questioned why they would need persistent group chat when they had e-mail, phones and portals. But once the penny dropped (often after a successful pilot) those same CXOs rapidly championed the concept and adopted it across the enterprise. Traders were attracted because they could create different ‘rooms’ for each market and conduct virtual meetings without leaving their desks. Group Chat offers a means of managing far-flung project teams and enabling faster, more informed investment decisionmaking.

There are, however, important issues to consider around IM and Group Chat, especially concerning regulatory and compliance risk. IM, including persistent group chat, is subject to the same stringent compliance regulations as email. Many organisations are required to record and archive all communication data for differing retention periods in secure, tamper-proof storage facilities. They must also be able to readily retrieve the data when required for audit, compliance or e-discovery purposes, or face hefty fines for non-compliance.

Existing compliance solutions archive IM communications in e-mail format, which is not 100 per cent compatible with the persistent group chat feature. Group Chat data does not translate easily into e-mail format, so there is a possibility of data being lost, manipulated or corrupted before it reaches the secure data storage unit. Compliance officers need to know who spoke to whom and when, and the retrieval of data for e-discovery and audit purpose breaks down and becomes complex when you have a chat room with hundreds or thousands of users. Converting Group Chat into e-mail can only be achieved by putting the recipients into the body of the text. That makes reconstruction and interpretation of Group Chat conversations almost impossible and highly time consuming.

In line with the recent launch of Microsoft OCS 2007 R2 Group Chat, Formicary released the latest version of ChatSeer. Unlike other compliance solutions, ChatSeer identifies and indexes all IM communication, including attachments in their native format, enabling simple, quick and precise response to discovery and litigation requests. It was built based on two top-tier global investment banks’ demand for a powerful compliance solution that would enable secure archiving and deliver fast, accurate response to all discovery requests while allowing users to communicate both internally and externally through all available channels improving collaboration, business relationships and information flow.

Some organisations may already have an archiving solution and require only a solution to store IM and Group Chat data in the same place. Others just don’t need ediscovery tools beyond the basic ones that they have. For these companies, ChatSeer Lite logs all message traffic on IM and persistent group chat, and supports the native integration of EIM message traffic, access and permission controls.

The launch of OCS R2 2007 and Group Chat spells a new and exciting phase in the development of UC. The right approach can help financial firms to rise to the challenges presented by these new technologies, and make the most of the opportunities they offer.

Formicary announces latest messaging solution and software, FastTrack and ChatSeer?

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 10:04:38 GMT

For the Group Chat feature of Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Release 2

[LONDON, United Kingdom] — Feb. 3, 2009 —Formicary Limited, provider of financial technology solutions announced the release of the ‘FastTrack’ implementation solution and the latest version of ChatSeer, an Enterprise Chat Monitoring and Compliance tool. Both releases are built for the Group Chat feature of Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Release 2 (R2).

“FastTrack is a cost and time effective solution for both implementation for first time clients and migration of existing MindAlign (predecessor of Group Chat) clients. Formicary delivers in-depth experience and a successful record of implementing and migrating enterprise chat rooms within major institutions for Group Chat,” said Philip Miller, Intelligent Messaging Director, Formicary Ltd.

“We have worked for the past seven years with Group Chat and have built a good reputation for successful implementation, migration and development of high quality messaging software. Microsoft’s acquisition of Parlano’s Group Chat technology and its incorporation into Office Communications Server 2007 R2 have led to Formicary building a valuable relationship with Microsoft. Over the past year we have worked together to create an implementation and migration strategy and a search and compliance tool ready for Group Chat,” Mr Miller added.

Other than solution services, as part of Formicary’s involvement with Group Chat since 2000 Formicary has been developing a range of compatible integration software, most noted of all is ChatSeer. ChatSeer is a software that ensures response to discovery and litigation requests on all internal and external instant messaging communication is simpler, quicker and returns accurate useful results which simplifies business audit processes.

“Unlike many other search and compliance tools, ChatSeer does not convert instant messages to email; instead it understands and treats chat conversations natively. This makes the search process faster and more accurate”, said Alistair Milne, ChatSeer Product Manager, Formicary Ltd.

Other ChatSeer features include:

· Full compatibility with the Group Chat feature of Office Communications Server 2007 R2

· MyChat – a personal compliance tool, which allows individual users to search and retrieve their own chat messages in one-to-one, one-to-many or chat room based conversation

· Archives and searches messages in their native format

· Search engine format view

· Perfect chronological reconstruction of any private or group conversation

· Archives and searches Microsoft Office Live Meeting conferences

· Exports search results to Microsoft Office Excel

· Case workflow functionality – including

o Permission-based searching, reviewing and production of cases

o Ability to ‘prune’ search results for increased relevance

o Legal hold on messages and files involved in an ongoing case

· System health information page

· All searches and workflow actions fully audited

“The combination of Office Communications Server 2007 Release 2 and Formicary ChatSeer™ provides a powerful new way for people to collaborate and offers customers a rich and integrated communications experience,” said Eric Swift, senior director of the Microsoft Unified Communications Group at Microsoft Corp. “Formicary is adding significant value to enterprise communications and enabling businesses to better connect people, information and business processes.”

Formicary’s long successful involvement with Parlano’s MindAlign, the technology behind Group Chat, has earned them the status of principle partner for implementation and upgrade (before Parlano’s acquirement by Microsoft in 2007). Being a consistent active partner for some of the world’s tier one Investment Banks’ MindAlign system makes Formicary a preferred choice for implementation and migration solution and provider of bespoke integration software centred on Group Chat.

About FastTrack
A methodology that allows implementation and migration to the new Group Chat feature of Office Communications Server 2007 R2 developed and based on over seven years of experience and successful projects with many of the world’s top Investment Banks.

About ChatSeer 2.0
An advanced Enterprise Chat Monitoring and Compliance Tool designed for discovery and investigation requests for the Group Chat feature of Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2, other Enterprise Instant Messaging (EIM) as well as Microsoft Office Live Meeting, ChatSeer indexes all instant message data securely and allows authorised users to search messages in their original format and perfectly reconstructs conversations including attachments for easy visual investigation.

About Formicary
Formicary Ltd is an information technology consultancy that specialises in providing first class solutions, primarily for the Financial Services industry for international clients around the globe. Formicary Intelligent Messaging Group (FIMG) is an independent consulting company relating to Instant Messaging and particularly Group Chat. Formicary has a leading and highly experienced SI and ISV team working with Group Chat and has been working closely with Microsoft on system implementation, integration and migration strategies. FIMG can provide a wide range of services including investigate, review and advise on strategy relating to unified collaboration and integration technologies. Formicary consultants work closely with clients to guide on external federation, migration, integration and the complex world of Enterprise Search and IM/Group Chat compliance ensuring clients take best advantage of the converging messaging technologies and have a robust, future proof unified collaboration strategy. FIMG also has the largest commercially available software (Bots) for Group Chat & IM that are being used across a large number of financial organizations. To know more, visit www.formicary.net

For more information, press only: Angeline Cheng, Formicary Ltd, +44 (0)20 7920 7106, angeline.cheng@formicary.net

Collaborative Genius - Group Chat feature on Microsoft OCS 2007 R2

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 10:04:01 GMT

by Howard Travers

As featured on Finance on Windows Magazine, Winter 2008

It is a beautiful autumn day in New York with clear skies, and it’s uncharacteristically warm. I am seated in a conference room at Microsoft’s offices in the heart of Manhattan, surrounded by many of the key managers that run the messaging platforms for top global investment banks. The event is well attended and has been anxiously anticipated, partly because of the failures and acquisitions occurring in the banking market, but more tangibly due to the question of how the group can migrate from MindAlign to Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 R2 Group Chat Console (GCC).

The occasion was a presentation by the Unified Communications Group to a group previously known as the MindAlign Customer Forum. The discussions were principally about the upcoming launch of OCS 2007 R2 and, more importantly for those attending, how Microsoft has integrated recent acquisition Parlano and its persistent group chat solution set, MindAlign, into the OCS 2007 R2 technology stack. The group and its business managers are a testament to the savings and benefits of persistent group chat, and are keen to make sure that Microsoft integrates the new technology into OCS in a way that protects its substantial investment. This group chat technology is not just another instant messaging feature – on its own it has become the very backbone of its users’ global communications systems.

OFFICE COMMUNICATIONS SERVER 2007 R2

The new benefits of OCS 2007 R2 without GCC are not inconsiderable. Using Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 there are substantial savings to be had in terms of both cost and improved business efficiencies. Presence information about a user and the bringing together of all the disparate modes of communication are proven to save time and money.

OCS 2007 R2 combines instant messaging, audio conferencing, Web conferencing, video conferencing and enterprise voice onto one platform. There is a long list of other features that will help speed up the business processes by integrating communications into applications. The bottom line is that it will produce business efficiencies, improve productivity, reduce telephony costs and simplify collaboration.

GROUP CHAT CONSOLE

With the fanfare and focus of OCS 2007 R2 being on telephony and cost savings, the addition of GCC will in time become one of the most important parts of the product. Having been originally developed in an investment bank (UBS), MindAlign was created to solve collaboration deficiencies within a trading environment. From 2000 to 2008 when Microsoft bought the technology, it had evolved into a more

broad-based messaging solution supporting a huge number of operational efficiencies. You may not instantly recognise the name MindAlign, but if you were aware of an enterprise persistent group chat

system it was more than likely to be MindAlign, often renamed to fit into the culture of the organisation – for example CitiChat (Citi), Grapevine (Dresdner), DBChat2 (Deutsche) and B:)Chat (Barcap).

At its core, the application allowed users to collaborate through group channels that could range from a team of five to groups covering the entire business (tens of thousands). It also provided a persistent message history and presence notification. Users could define how they wanted to be alerted to information, share information and generally work better together; especially across different offices and time zones.

Over the years there were countless examples of efficiencies in costs, but most importantly MindAlign produced more revenue and profit. In an early example, traders on separate continents sharing information in a group channel and focused on a particular market segment were able to identify an opportunity that resulted in profit from a single transaction that paid for the entire application. With one-to-one instant messaging, telephony or using conventional e-mail, neither party would have been able to find out the other’s interest in the topic. The key benefits that have been found are:

• Increased revenue (commissions) through an efficient exchange of global trading opportunities

• Reduction of market data costs by increasing the flow of information and sharing experience and insight

• Improved customer relationships with better service and faster response times

• Increased knowledge exchange/capture to further leverage the knowledge of analysts and other experts

• Reduced communication costs by decreasing the volume of e-mail, telephone and network bandwidth.

However, one other area that should not be overlooked is the power of integrating the application with other internal business applications. That extra 20 per cent, to use the Microsoft analogy, holds substantial benefits and opportunities for financial institutions.

A SUCCESSFUL COMBINATION

MindAlign was an expensive yet highly valuable product, especially compared with the client access licence of OCS. That said, it greatly enhanced the value of communications. Banks invested millions in the acquisition, implementation and adoption of the technology, and all of them recouped their investment many times over. Microsoft and the OCS GCC team have put in a substantial effort to include the proven features within the OCS product stack. What we observed in the presentation of the GCC was that the product incorporated the rich functionality of MindAlign that fitted into the consolidated vision of OCS. Many major MindAlign clients have now started to plan their migration.

Over nine years of working with this technology, I have seen how it can change an organisation. I am totally convinced about the benefits of persistent group chat, and confident that this new technology combined with OCS 2007 R2 will make a major impact; not just in the finance industry. The proof of this is in the way it has spread across the major financial institutions and been integrated into the core fabric of the business. I personally do not believe that even Microsoft, outside of its senior management and the OCS Group, truly realises the impact that this technology will have and the way it will change our lives forever.

OCS 2007 R2 becomes generally available at the end of this year, and GCC has a virtual launch on 3 February 2009. If you look at OCS 2007 R2 only for the GCC, and implement it properly, you will save time and money, and benefit your business.

Howard Travers is the Business Development Manager at Formicary.

Simplified Web Solution for Legal Services NYC

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 09:57:40 GMT

Legal Services NYC (LS-NYC) is the largest organisation exclusively devoted to providing free civil legal services in the United States with local offices in every borough of New York City. Made up of attorneys and staff, they provide a comprehensive approach to finding solutions to legal problems of clients – single mothers, workers with disabilities, seniors and others.

They provide high quality free legal help on cases involving housing, family, domestic violence, public benefits, income tax, employment, education, consumer rights and economic development which includes assisting the most vulnerable people in the society such as people who are not receiving child support, victims of domestic violence, AIDS and HIV carriers, and elderly citizens facing eviction and unsafe living conditions.

Previously, LS-NYC had a very limited web presence and relied on a different contractor to create and maintain their website, but lack of web design and limited support proved to be a problem. External vendors with experience in providing to non-profit organisations could not meet LS-NYC’s demands in terms of flexibility, delivery timelines and quality; therefore the requirement was to have a web portal that can be managed in-house.

The web portal required was also to fulfil LS-NYC’s need to be more accessible especially to enable in-house staff to maintain and develop content easily as well as manage accounts, and to serve as an important point of presence to communicate its mission and role to the public; especially for clients, research students, potential recruits, funders and sponsors.

LS-NYC opted for EPiX Portal solution - a unified package for information sharing that integrates easily with existing legacy applications. It has content management, resource management and collaboration tools, and can be extensively personalised to enable LS-NYC to tailor the look and feel of their site to suit their corporate image.

The user-friendly interface allows users with basic computing skills to create their internet, intranet and extranet sites with little assistance. It is totally scalable to accommodate growing numbers of users and new functionality.

Information on the organisation is now more accessible to the public. The web portal also serves as a recruiting tool for potential employees, and donors and sponsors now have something tangible to peruse. LS-NYC now have full control over their web portal and existing staffs are able manage the content on the website anytime, anywhere. EPiX Portal solution offers LS-NYC easy and quick editing functions and future expansion into creating an intranet and extranet sites.

Commerzbank select Formicary for systems consolidation and integration

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 10:28:40 GMT

London - UK – 5th August 2008 - Formicary Ltd, an IT company specialising in providing solutions to the financial services industry today released their latest case study, focusing on systems consolidation and integration between EuroHypo and Commerzbank AG.

EuroHypo is Europe’s largest institution specialising in financing real-estate and public sector projects and a leading provider of commercial structured finance. Since the takeover of EuroHypo, Commerzbank is Germany’s second largest bank and one of the leading banks in Europe. Its consolidated balance sheet total stands at €608bn. Approximately 36,000 employees look after more than 8 million customers worldwide.

Following the acquisition of EuroHypo, Commerzbank’s strategy was to consolidate trade data by integrating EuroHypo’s trade portfolio, stored in Sungard’s Front Arena, into Commerzbank’s existing trading system, Misys Summit.

The specification was to migrate EuroHypo’s trade portfolio whilst maintaining the existing risk management and settlement functionality. Customised feeds were therefore required between Commerzbank systems and the existing EuroHypo applications. In addition, new risk reporting functionality was required to ensure continuity between the environments.

Together with the team at Commerzbank, Formicary helped in leading the development of the three principal sections of the project: Trade migration, Downstream system feeds and Risk reporting.

The existing EuroHypo Treasury portfolio consisted of thousands of trades so the data first had to be analysed to ensure the cleanest possible representation in Summit while maintaining all necessary trade customisations and extensions. In addition, much of the portfolio was structured, which presented the added challenge of representing highly customised cash flow schedules.

Formicary consultants wrote a trade migration application to migrate the vast majority of the trade portfolio automatically, in the most efficient manner possible with comprehensive logging and error reporting. Complex and highly structured cash flow schedules were represented as trades in Summit using custom built product extensions.

Formicary developed a comprehensive risk reporting facility, customised for the EuroHypo trade portfolio. Given the structured nature of the deals, EuroHypo have highly specialised risk reporting requirements. These reporting conventions had to be maintained from Summit, to ensure continuity for EuroHypo Risk Management.
A risk reporting utility was developed, allowing for customised PV and risk calculations. For example, Delta, Gamma, and Vega can be calculated by using proprietary curve shifting methods already in use at EuroHypo.

To deliver new deals to existing back office infrastructure, Formicary provided EuroHypo with feeds from Summit to their existing settlements and accounting system, SAP. While the main trading system was integrated into Commerzbank’s platform, the new trade, price and risk feeds were able to integrate Summit seamlessly into EuroHypo’s existing infrastructure, minimising operational risk and unnecessary disruption.

Formicary provided Commerzbank with end-to-end support in the project, from initial scoping of development requirements, through to implementation, testing and support. Commerzbank and EuroHypo now have a successfully migrated trade population with supporting feeds, allowing their operation to be streamlined with minimal disturbance to their business environment.

Mr Thomas Metzler, Head of Derivatives IT at Commerzbank AG said “Formicary’s dedicated and knowledgeable team have made a significant contribution to the success and timely completion of this business critical project.”

About Formicary

Formicary is an information technology solutions company that specialises in building integrated applications to maximise business efficiency and streamline business processes for the Financial Services industry.

Founded in 2000, Formicary brings together a world class team of talented and dedicated professionals with industry experience and understanding covering front to back office in equities, fixed income and derivatives. This knowledge, coupled with technical excellence ranging from legacy client/server to cutting edge technologies, enables Formicary to offer innovative and sophisticated solutions to help clients improve their productivity and increase their return on investment.

Formicary has offices in Europe, North America and Australia. For more information, please visit www.formicary.net or contact us at info@formicary.net

Formicary launch TVSeer? - The enterprise TV and audio monitoring agent

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 15:51:43 GMT

London - UK - 17^th July 2008 - Formicary Ltd, an IT consultancy firm specialising in providing solutions to the financial services industry and eMedia Monitor, a technology leader in broadcast monitoring, audio/video search and retrieval, today launched TVSeer™ - The enterprise TV and audio monitoring agent.

TVSeer™ is a unique new service that monitors media broadcasts on a user's behalf and delivers targeted alert notifications direct to the desktop via instant message. Using advanced speech to text technology, TVSeer™ monitors multiple channels in multiple languages 24/7, automatically delivering relevant content within 15 seconds of transmission.

The service has been designed for financial professionals who need to know events that will move or change the global market landscape, as well as those who are interested in sector specific news.

Specifically aimed at researchers, analysts and traders in financial services, TVSeer™ allows users to set up advanced search filters for specified keywords and complex terms. Once triggered, an alert containing the summary is sent to the user, who can then choose to view the original clip.

Philip Miller, Head of Intelligent Messaging at Formicary said "We have been working with top tier Investment Banks to deliver this service based on superior speech recognition technology, uniquely tailored to the Financial Services market. We are pleased to announce that all information consumers are now in a position to benefit from this innovation."

About Formicary

Formicary is an information technology solutions company that specialises in building integrated applications to maximise business efficiency and streamline business processes for the Financial Services industry.

Founded in 2000, Formicary brings together a world class team of talented and dedicated professionals with industry experience and understanding covering front to back office in equities, fixed income and derivatives. This knowledge, coupled with technical excellence ranging from legacy client/server to cutting edge technologies, enables Formicary to offer innovative and sophisticated solutions to help clients improve their productivity and increase their return on investment.

Formicary has offices in Europe, North America and Australia. For more information, please visit www.formicary.net or contact us at info@formicary.net

About eMedia Monitor

eMedia Monitor headquartered in Vienna are a technology leader in providing services for Broadcast Monitoring, Audio/Video Search and Retrieval. eMedia Monitor systems are used in a wide range of applications allowing users access to both real-time and archive content. Specific market-based speech software delivers data and analysis for business intelligence.

Formicary Flyers race into third place at the London Hong Kong Dragon Boat Race

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:14:35 GMT

London – UK – 16th June 2008 - Formicary Ltd, an IT consultancy firm specialising in providing solutions to the financial services industry, paddled their way to success at the London Hong Kong Dragon Boat race on Sunday 8th June. The Formicary Flyers, competing for the first time, took 3rd place out of 44 teams to win a trophy.

Dragon Boat racing is emblematic of strength, energy and competitiveness and the London Hong Kong annual event, now in its 11th year continues to grow in popularity. This year a record number of teams took part including top tier investment banks and Chinese community teams. The day’s events consisted of three heats with the fastest 8 teams securing a place in the final.

The Formicary Flyers led by Howard Travers, a former British Dragon Boat team member (1988 – 1991) had never raced together before Sunday, yet put in a sterling effort to achieve the 2nd fastest time of the day at one minute 8.39 seconds.

In the grand finals, the Flyers had a rocky start dropping back to 6th position, before the team found their rhythm and fought their way up to 3rd place, crossing the finish with a time of one minute 13.45 seconds. The top two teams came in at 1 minute 10.50 seconds and one minute 13.00 seconds respectively.

After the event, Howard said “We have all had a great day and everyone really pulled together to achieve a fantastic result. In the final there is far more pressure and that is when concentration, teamwork and practice really counts. We are now looking forward to next year, when we plan to build on this initial success and take first place!”

About Formicary

Formicary is an information technology consultancy that specialises in building integrated applications/solutions to maximise business efficiency and streamline business processes for the Financial Services industry.

Founded in 2000, Formicary brings together a world class team of talented and dedicated professionals with industry experience and understanding covering front to back office in equities, fixed income and derivatives. This knowledge, coupled with technical excellence ranging from legacy client/server to cutting edge technologies, enables Formicary to offer innovative and sophisticated solutions to help clients improve their productivity and increase their return on investment.

Formicary has offices in Europe and North America. For more information, please visit www.formicary.net or contact us at info@formicary.net

Formicary and eMediaMonitor partner to deliver real-time breaking news alerts to the Financial Services Industry

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:14:35 GMT

London - UK - 20^th May 2008 - Formicary Ltd, an IT consultancy firm specialising in providing solutions to the financial services industry, today announced an exclusive partnership with eMediaMonitor, a technology leader in broadcast monitoring, audio/video search and retrieval, to deliver cutting edge market specific solutions. Formicary’s extensive financial markets integration experience, unified with eMediaMonitor’s real-time audio indexing technology, will establish a world class monitoring service for breaking news delivered via real-time messaging direct to the desktops of traders and analysts.

Formicary’s Intelligent Messaging Group, alongside eMediaMonitor, has been working in conjunction with several key investment banks to pioneer alert and distribution mechanisms for broadcast monitoring services. Following positive market feedback, both companies are committed to continue working in this innovative area to provide financial institutions with the latest breaking news.

eMediaMonitor’s CEO and founder Dr Thomas Netousek said “We are delighted to be working with Formicary in the rollout of this unprecedented service. Speed, accuracy and the provision of customised intelligence are key factors in meeting the needs of users in the busy trading environment of the financial services market. The ability to capture, index and deliver worldwide broadcast news provides a new level of service to demanding professionals”

Philip Miller, Head of Intelligent Messaging at Formicary, added “Our aim is to bring clients the best possible solutions. Partnering with eMediaMonitor has enabled us to combine the latest advances in speech recognition technology with our messaging expertise to deliver unique solutions that offer a genuine market advantage.”

About Formicary

About eMediaMonitor

eMediaMonitor headquartered in Vienna are a technology leader in providing services for Broadcast Monitoring, Audio/Video Search and Retrieval. eMediaMonitor systems are used in a wide range of applications allowing users access to both real-time and archive content. Specific market-based speech software delivers data and analysis for business intelligence.

Microsoft UK Customer Forum & Formicary Intelligent Messaging Group

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:14:35 GMT

London - UK - 12^thDecember 2007 - Formicary Ltd, an IT consultancy firm specialising in providing solutions for the Investment Banking industry, was invited to Microsoft's UK Customer Forum to give a presentation on the services and software that Formicary's Intelligent Messaging Group offer to complement and support clients' requirements.

After giving a high level overview of Formicary, the talk then focused on the value added software and services that the Intelligent Messaging Group offer including Administration and Reporting software and add on functionality options, as well as ChatSeer™ the Enterprise Chat Monitoring Tool, which is Formicary's search and retrieval software for Instant Messaging applications developed to meet new compliance standards.

The team also took the opportunity to introduce their new software TVSeer™ which monitors multiple television channels and searches for keywords so users can be alerted to relevant breaking news within less than a minute of broadcasting.

For the full presentation slides click here.

In-the-Brain of Hani Suleiman on Enterprise Java Testing

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:22:03 GMT

London - UK - 13^thNovember 2007 - Hani Suleiman presented a Skills Matter In-the-Brain Session on Tuesday, 13th November where he covered a pragmatic approach towards enterprise testing. Enterprise software is usually very difficult to test, and many of us are faced with the harsh realities of a demanding business that either does not value testing or does not prioritise it.

In this session Hani Suleiman, CTO of Formicary and co-author of Next Generation Java Testing: TestNG and Advanced Concepts, helped developers add testing seamlessly into their existing processes, without placing unrealistic expectations that are counter-intuitive to enterprise developers (such as TDD). He wrapped-up the session by highlighting a few typical enterprise scenarios and what approaches can be used to test them.

Read a review of Hani's book on TheServerside.com

Formicary release the OCS Compliance Connector for ChatSeer? - The Enterprise Chat Monitoring Tool

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:22:03 GMT

London - UK - 7^th November 2007 - Following the recent launch of Microsoft’s Office Communications Server 2007 (OCS) Formicary Ltd, an IT consultancy and software firm specialising in providing solutions for the Financial Services industry, today announced the release the OCS Compliance Connector for ChatSeer™ - The Enterprise Chat Monitoring Tool.

This advanced solution was developed and implemented to meet the requirements of two top tier Investment Banks in response to the new Instant Messaging (IM) compliance regulations. It has also been designed to ease the discovery and compliance investigation requests for the next generation of channel-based IM applications. In addition to OCS, ChatSeer™ connects to Parlano’s MindAlign (recently acquired by Microsoft), Reuters Messaging and Microsoft’s Live Communication Server 2005 (LCS) which includes MSN, AOL and Yahoo! via PIC.

The unique design and architecture of ChatSeer™ means that it integrates with IM in a native manner, instead of converting instant messages to email format for storage. This allows an enterprise to be confident that all IM traffic, both internally and externally, is easily discovered and that private and channel-based conversations are accurately reconstructed.

The system is designed to be highly available, robust and has the new optional MyChat™ module that enables individual users to search and retrieve their own messages across all IM applications.

Formicary releases the latest version of ChatSeer? - The Enterprise Chat Monitoring Tool

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:22:04 GMT

London - UK – 18^th September 2007 - Formicary Ltd, an IT consultancy and software firm specialising in providing solutions for the Financial Services industry, today announced the release of the latest version of ChatSeer™ - The Enterprise Chat Monitoring Tool, specifically designed to ease discovery and investigation requests for the next generation of channel-based Instant Messaging (IM) applications.

This advanced solution was developed to meet the requirements of two top tier Investment Banks. ChatSeer connects to Parlano’s MindAlign, Reuters Messaging and Microsoft’s Live Communication Server (LCS) which includes MSN, AOL and Yahoo! via PIC. ChatSeer’s unique design and architecture integrates with IM in a native manner, instead of converting instant messages to email format for storage. This allows an enterprise to be confident that all IM traffic, both internally and externally, is easily discovered and that private and channel-based conversations are accurately reconstructed.

The growth of Instant Messaging (IM) is currently increasing at an exponential rate especially with the emergence of new technologies unifying communications. Under current legislation and industry regulations governing electronic communications, IM is now subject to the same stringent regulations and compliance requirements as email. Organisations are required to record and archive all communication data for differing retention periods in secure, tamper proof storage facilities and must be able to readily retrieve the data when required for audit, compliance or discovery purposes.

“ChatSeer monitors, identifies and indexes all IM communications allowing authorised personnel to quickly search and retrieve all archived data accurately. This provides assurance to regulators that Compliance Officers can deliver a rapid, meaningful response to all discovery requests. In addition, the new optional MyChat™ module enables individual users to search and retrieve their own messages either in one-to-one, one-to-many or channel-based communications across all IM applications for reference or confirmation purposes.” said Howard Travers, Business Development Manager at Formicary. He continued ”The recent announcement by Microsoft of its intention to purchase Parlano has only served to underline further the importance of channel-based IM/Chat and justify our continued investment in the next generation of messaging.”

Formicary Earns Certified Partner Status in Microsoft Partner Programme

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:22:04 GMT

London - UK -10^th August 2007 - Formicary Ltd, an IT consultancy and software firm specialising in providing solutions for the Financial Services industry, today announced it has achieved Certified status in the Microsoft Partner Programme, confirming its long-term commitment to developing solutions using and integrating with Microsoft technologies.

Formicary already has an established reputation working with Microsoft technologies and has a large number of highly qualified and experienced consultants working on software solutions and bespoke client projects.

To attain certification in the Microsoft Partner Programme, Formicary gained competency in different specialist areas and demonstrated its expertise with client references from three Investment Banks. It is currently focusing on Information Worker Solutions - specialising in Unified Communications, Portals, and Collaboration; Custom Development Solutions - concentrating on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Microsoft® Office 2007 and Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Beta 1, and Mobile Technologies.

“We are really pleased to have earned certified status as we have been developing solutions using Microsoft technologies for some time” said Howard Travers, Business Development Manager at Formicary. “We feel certification demonstrates our commitment and will allow us to work even closer with Microsoft to continue to deliver innovative integrated solutions.”

Karl Noakes, Director, Partner Solution Sales Group at Microsoft, said: “When customers are looking to implement a Microsoft technology solution for their business, their best bet is to turn to an expert — a Microsoft Certified Partner. Microsoft recognises Formicary for demonstrating this level of expertise, especially in the unified communications market and welcomes it as a new Microsoft Certified Partner.”

About Formicary

Founded in 2000, Formicary brings together a world class team of talented and dedicated professionals with industry experience and understanding covering front to back office in equities, fixed income and derivatives. This knowledge, coupled with technical excellence ranging from legacy client/server to cutting edge technologies, enables Formicary to offer innovative and sophisticated solutions to help clients improve their productivity and increase their return on investment.

Formicary has offices in Europe and North America. For more information, please visit www.formicary.net or contact us at info@formicary.net

Developers: Expect New Major Language Within Five Years

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:22:04 GMT

Release Date: 26th March 2007

Las Vegas - The industry experts gathered once again at TheServerSide Java Symposium to discuss current developments and the future of programming. The panel discussion titled "2010: A Developer's Odyssey" sparked a lively debate saying we should expect to see more dynamic languages and possibly a new major language in the next five years.

To read the eweek.com article covering the discussion click here

Frictionless Collaboration & Integration - Free In-the-Brain Session on messaging trends

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:23:13 GMT

State of the Nations (USA v UK)

This Skills Matter and Formicary In-the-Brain session, will provide a considered view of messaging trends in the Investment Banking communities on both sides of the Atlantic.

Everyone agrees that collaboration is important, but making money is fundamental. Therefore whilst the adoption of messaging systems can save time and reduce costs, the real value can be found by integrating messaging with business systems in order to drive revenue.

Lead Business and Technical Consultants from Formicary’s Intelligent Messaging Group, Howard Travers and Philip Miller, aim to provide a glimpse of the current trends in the USA/UK Investment Banking Industry and highlight some of the opportunities that they bring.

Attendance is free for registered participants. To register please click here

Talk: Frictionless Collaboration & Integration

Speakers: Howard Travers & Philip Miller

Date: Wednesday, March 7

Time: 18:30-20:30

Location:
1 Sekforde Street
LONDON EC1R 0BE
The venue is very close to Farringdon tube.

Map: Google Map

Formicary? Portal sets the standard for online insurance policies for Arch Europe Travel Insurance

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:23:13 GMT

Release date: 28^th July 2006

Formicary Ltd, an IT consultancy firm specialising in providing solutions for the Financial Services industry, today released the latest case study on Formicary™ Portal Solution for Arch Travel Insurance Europe.

Arch Insurance Company (Europe) Ltd (Arch Europe) is a subsidiary of Arch Capital Group Ltd., which provides insurance and reinsurance on a global basis through its operations in Bermuda, the United States, Canada and Europe. Arch Europe was formed in May 2004 to provide a route for Arch customers to access the London insurance market.

The travel underwriting team joined in December 2005 and wished to create multiple web sites to enable their brokers to sell travel insurance online to their clients. All of the sites would be based on a single back-end to ensure maximum coverage with minimal input.

To achieve this initiative, the Arch Europe team needed a progressive solution that was both flexible and robust enough to allow for multiple individually branded sites, all based on a sophisticated yet flexible pricing engine. The solution also needed to be easy to implement and simple to manage, whilst being fast, efficient and scalable, in order to handle the anticipated increase in traffic volumes.

Formicary™ Portal provided the framework for a complete solution that was fully expandable. It supported the underlying structure, pricing engine and accounting tools, whilst allowing for multiple companies to have their own community sites on top - all of which could be centrally managed by Arch Europe.

The structure of the sites is simple and accessible enabling users to choose from a selection of pre-defined variables to configure the policy; the quote is then calculated using a sophisticated pricing engine. If a user has identified a medical condition, they are then asked to fill in the relevant form which is reviewed by a member of a medical company to ensure it meets their requirements.

Each company/community site is individually tailored in terms of the look and feel to reflect the corporate identity. Policy variables and discounts can also be customised by adding, editing or deleting the appropriate fields.

Brokers have been keen to sign up to this new offering by Arch Europe for a variety of reasons: one, they get newer, better, more efficient and flexible software, two, they can have policy variables easily tailored to create as many policy types as they require, three, they can get Arch Europe to tailor the look and feel of the site and finally they can get Arch Europe to enable any multiple of sub-users to have access to the software, ensuring they too get a larger share of the market.

Several alternatives were shortlisted, but Formicary™ Portal solution was chosen as the most cost-effective solution due to its ease of use, multiple authorisation levels, the extensibility provided by its community structure and user groups and the overall design flexibility features.

Formicary™ Portal has provided Arch Europe with a new, easily managed solution that is both scalable and flexible in design. It has allowed Arch Travel Insurance the freedom to make many additions to the portal and they now have 7 main companies or community sites that are in turn used by hundreds of smaller brokers.

Consequently, Arch Europe has been able to provide its brokers with a unique online resource that gives them a competitive edge and helps establish Arch as a key new player in the travel insurance market.

Dipesh Patel, Travel Underwriter, Arch Insurance Company, said "Formicary™ Portal has provided us with a progressive, scalable and cost effective portal solution which has enabled us to set the standard for online policy issuance in the UK travel insurance arena."

About Formicary

Formicary is an information technology consultancy that specialises in building integrated applications/solutions to maximise business efficiency and streamline business processes for the Financial Services industry.

Founded in 2000, Formicary brings together a world class team of talented and dedicated professionals with industry experience and understanding covering front to back office in equities, fixed income and derivatives. Hani Suleiman, Formicary’s CTO, is also represented on the influential Java Community Process (JCP) Executive Committee. This knowledge, coupled with technical excellence ranging from legacy client/server to cutting edge technologies, enables Formicary to offer innovative and sophisticated solutions to help clients improve their productivity and increase their return on investment.

Formicary has offices in Europe and North America. For more information, please visit www.formicary.net or contact us at info@formicary.net

About Arch Insurance Company (Europe)

Arch Insurance Company (Europe) Ltd (Arch Europe) is a subsidiary of Arch Capital Group Ltd., which provides insurance and reinsurance on a global basis through its operations in Bermuda, the United States, Canada and Europe. Arch Europe was formed in May 2004 to provide a route for Arch customers to access the London insurance market. For further information please refer to www.archinsurance.com.

Formicary appoints Howard Travers, Business Development Manager

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:23:13 GMT

Release date: 13^th June 2006

Formicary Ltd, an IT consultancy firm specialising in providing solutions for the Financial Services industry, today announced the appointment of Howard Travers as Business Development Manager. Howard will be responsible for developing new business opportunities with a strong focus on expanding Formicary’s Intelligent Messaging Group.

Howard has joined Formicary from one of its main partners, Parlano Inc., a leading provider of persistent group messaging solutions. As International Account Manager he helped develop, expand and manage Parlano’s MindAlign accounts for some of the world’s leading top tier investment banks.

Prior to Parlano, Howard held a Sales Manager position at Divine Inc., where he was responsible for front line strategic management and new business sales. He has also held Sales and Account Manager roles at a number of software companies providing solutions to the Banking and Finance Industry.

Howard’s new position is seen as a logical step forward from his role at Parlano, utilising his client focussed experience along with his extensive knowledge of software and messaging applications. This industry awareness coupled with Formicary’s existing technical expertise will enable the Formicary Intelligent Messaging team to offer business consultancy services to help clients gain an overall awareness of capabilities and advise on best practice, strategy and overall direction.

“Formicary work closely with Parlano offering technical and strategic consultancy services to ensure clients are utilising their messaging applications to best effect” said Howard “Instant messaging has become increasingly important in the world of finance and for the first time the Formicary Group can offer a dedicated Professional Services team focused entirely on building business value.”

About Formicary

Formicary is an information technology consultancy that specialises in building integrated applications/solutions to maximise business efficiency and streamline business processes for the Financial Services industry.

Founded in 2000, Formicary brings together a world class team of talented and dedicated professionals with industry experience and understanding covering front to back office in equities, fixed income and derivatives. Hani Suleiman, Formicary’s CTO, sits on the influential Java Community Process (JCP) Executive Committee which guides the evolution of Java technologies. This knowledge, coupled with technical excellence ranging from legacy client/server to cutting edge technologies, enables Formicary to offer innovative and sophisticated solutions to help clients improve their productivity and increase their return on investment.

Formicary has offices in Europe and North America. For more information, please visit www.formicary.net or contact us at info@formicary.net

Formicary Intelligent Messaging Group is formed in response to growth of Instant Messaging in Financial Services Industry

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:24:44 GMT

Release date: 25th May 2006

Formicary Ltd, an IT consultancy firm specialising in providing solutions for the Financial Services industry, today announced the formation of a dedicated Intelligent Messaging group to help satisfy the demand for Instant Messaging expertise and services in the marketplace.

Instant messaging products like AOL, MSN, YAHOO and Reuters Messaging are playing an increasingly important role in the external communication of Financial Services organisations. Internal Group or Community based products like Parlano’s MindAlign have changed the way organisations communicate and have become an essential part of their infrastructure.

As Instant Messaging products have matured and their value has been firmly established, so the need to integrate these solutions with external communities and other business critical applications has become apparent. Formicary established its reputation assisting with these issues, building integrated solutions with front office trading applications like Murex, Summit and Calypso as well as content portals and information management systems.

Formicary’s Intelligent Messaging group aims to encompass all these skills and combined with a partnership with Parlano Inc., the leading vendor in Group messaging systems, feels it is ideally placed to meet the increasing demand for Instant Messaging expertise, in the UK and North America.

Philip Miller, Formicary’s Senior Manager, who will be heading up the team, said “This is a very exciting time for Formicary as we bring all our skills and experience together in a complete package for the first time.” He continued “We believe we are the only consultancy with an expert team dedicated to the improvement of Instant Messaging within the Financial Services industry. We are able to help clients get the best return on their investment by integrating Messaging solutions with information and trading applications.”

About Formicary

Founded in 2000, Formicary brings together a world class team of talented and dedicated professionals with industry experience and understanding covering front to back office in equities, fixed income and derivatives. Hani Suleiman, Formicary’s CTO, sits on the influential Java Community Process (JCP) Executive Committee which guides the evolution of Java technologies. This knowledge, coupled with technical excellence ranging from legacy client/server to cutting edge technologies, enables Formicary to offer innovative and sophisticated solutions to help clients improve their productivity and increase their return on investment.

Formicary has offices in Europe and North America. For more information, please visit www.formicary.net or contact us at info@formicary.net

Formicary?s CTO Hani Suleiman presents OSWorkflow session at TheServerSide Java Symposium

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:24:44 GMT

Release date: 24th March 2006

Formicary Ltd, an IT consultancy firm specialising in providing solutions for the Financial Services industry is pleased to announce that Chief Technology Officer Mr Hani Suleiman was invited to speak today at TheServerSide Java Symposium held in Las Vegas.

TSSJS is the must-attend conference for any Java professional looking for a forum to discuss existing projects and collaborate with fellow community members to improve existing standards and develop new Java technologies. Focused on server-side Java technologies and development practices, TSSJS is an exclusive gathering of industry luminaries, who have definitively influenced the way we develop today, and will develop enterprise applications tomorrow.

Mr Suleiman's talk focused on OSWorkflow. OSWorkflow is an open source workflow engine, which is easily embedded and flexible enough to meet most enterprise workflow needs. It is sponsored by Formicary and deployed in trading platforms, portal solutions and other business focused applications.

The talk included a brief introduction on the OSWorkflow engine, before walking through the core concepts and discussing the underlying architecture. This was followed by a demonstration of the graphical workflow editor and concluded with a use case illustrating integration and usage patterns.

The talk was well attended and generated a large amount of interest.

About Formicary

Formicary is an information technology consultancy that specialises in building integrated applications/solutions to maximise business efficiency and streamline business processes for the Financial Services industry.

Founded in 2000, Formicary brings together a world class team of talented and dedicated professionals with industry experience and understanding covering front to back office in equities, fixed income and derivatives. This knowledge, coupled with technical excellence ranging from legacy client/server to cutting edge technologies, enables Formicary to offer innovative and sophisticated solutions to help clients improve their productivity and increase their return on investment.

Formicary has offices in Europe and North America. For more information, please visit www.formicary.net or contact us at info@formicary.net

Experts predict enterprise Java trends for 2006

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:24:44 GMT

Release Date: 23rd March 2006

LAS VEGAS — During the keynote at The ServerSide Symposium, a panel of industry experts discussed the current state of enterprise Java, as well as predicted future trends for this year. The discussion was lively, with the panelists often prompting the audience for feedback and opinions. Formicary's CTO Hani Suleiman was on the panel, and his prediction was that Java EE5 would land with a big splash in 2006, as vendors slowly release their implementations and developers realise the huge gains in usability that the new platform offers.

eweek.com has further coverage of the keynote, as well as some discussion of the topics raised. To read the full article click here

Formicary forms partnership with Parlano to provide value added services in persistent group messaging

Mon, 18 May 2009 15:35:57 GMT

Release date: January 17th 2006

Formicary Ltd, an IT consultancy firm specialising in providing solutions for the financial services industry, and Parlano Inc, a leading provider of persistent group messaging, enterprise instant messaging and presence management solutions, today announced a strategic partnership whereby Formicary will deliver strategic and technical consultancy services to enterprises deploying Parlano’s MindAlign suite of products in Europe and North America.

Formicary’s consultancy expertise helps financial services businesses gain a competitive advantage by streamlining global market operations and broadening information sharing and awareness between traders, asset managers, research staff, and sales teams.

The alliance formalises a five year relationship in which Formicary has been working directly with Parlano’s MindAlign product in some of the world’s largest financial services organisations.

Formicary has proven experience deploying MindAlign and delivering complete solutions including:

Integration with enterprise applications such as trading and research distribution systems
Development of automated BOTs for proactively distributing information such as market and company news from internal and external systems directly into appropriate collaboration channels
Development of custom forms (SIOPs) for controlling the format and distribution of data such as market events and trade activities
Installation, upgrades, and ongoing support

In order to speed customer deployment and success, Formicary has developed a suite of customisable applications including a BOT framework built on top of MindAlign’s BOT technology that enables Formicary to rapidly integrate MindAlign into the rest of an enterprise’s information architecture. These extensions enable users to access important information and events directly in chat channels, thus consolidating MindAlign’s position as a centralised location for collaboration and mission critical communication in financial services.

Formicary Director Joseph Do stated “The partnership is a natural progression which will be beneficial to both parties and especially clients. Working together, Parlano and Formicary are able to offer our clients a secure enterprise group messaging platform which can be integrated, fine tuned and supported with ease. The services we are able to offer reinforce Parlano’s commitment to providing the infrastructure and applications necessary to improve secure real time communication around the world.”

“MindAlign delivers a real competitive edge to financial services organisations because of its unique ability to connect global teams, streamline collaboration, and alert users to critical, time sensitive information no matter where that information resides.” said Jay McGlynn, Parlano’s senior vice president of worldwide sales. “Our strategic partnership with Formicary is critical as Parlano continues to see rapid growth in financial services markets and as our customers push the envelope in their vision to integrate MindAlign with their other mission critical systems.”

About Formicary

Formicary has offices in Europe and North America. For more information, please visit www.formicary.net or contact us at info@formicary.net

About Parlano, Inc

Parlano is a leading provider of persistent group messaging solutions. Parlano's MindAlign solutions deliver instant, intelligent and persistent group and topic based messaging to securely connect employees, customers and partners with the right people, information and context to execute business processes more efficiently. Companies including ABN AMRO, Bank of America, Cantor Fitzgerald, Cargill, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, UBS and others rely on Parlano to utilise messaging as a strategic business tool. Backed by Longworth Venture Partners, Oak Investment Partners and Golden Gate Capital, Parlano supports its customers and partners from its worldwide headquarters in Chicago, Illinois and EMEA headquarters in London.

For more information, please visit www.parlano.com or contact us at our HQ in Chicago at +1.312.655.8330 or +1.866.727.5266 or +1.866.PARLANO or at our EMEA office on +44 (1342) 301920

For continuous updates on Parlano News, please subscribe to Parlano’s RSS News Feed at http://www.parlano.com/rss/news.xml

Formicary's CTO Hani Suleiman is elected to the Java Community Process (JCP) Executive Committee

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:24:45 GMT

Release date: 17th November 2005

Formicary Ltd, an IT consultancy firm specialising in providing solutions for the Financial Services industry, is pleased to announce that their Chief Technology Officer, Hani Suleiman has been elected to take a seat on a Java Community Process (JCP) Executive Committee (EC) which guides the evolution of Java technologies. Other nominees included the corporations Intel, EMC and IONA.

The Executive Committees comprise of major stakeholders and other representatives of the Java Community who shape how Java technologies evolve by developing and revising technology specifications, Reference Implementations (RIs) and Technology Compatibility Kits (TCKs), which influence all standards-based updates and improvements.

There are two Executive Committees: Standard/Enterprise Edition (SE/EE) which oversees Java technologies for desktop/server space and the Micro Edition (ME) for the consumer/embedded space. Every year two seats become available for election on each committee and then voting is carried out by JCP members. The ECs are made up of 15 people each serving a 3 year term with a permanent seat being held by Sun Microsystems. Hani Suleiman, who is already on the expert group of 4 Java Specification Requests and writes for the Java Developer Journal, was elected ahead of both individuals and corporations to take up his new position on the SE/EE Executive Committee.

After the results were published Mr Suleiman said “I'm honoured and thrilled to be elected onto the Executive Committee. By participating I hope to ensure that Java technologies continue to move in the right direction by advocating open standards and encouraging innovation within the platform.”

Executive Committee Info can be found here www.jcp.org/en/participation/committee

About Formicary

Formicary is an information technology consultancy that specialises in building integrated applications/solutions to maximise business efficiency and streamline business processes for the Financial Services industry.

Formicary has offices in Europe and North America. For more information, please visit www.formicary.net or contact us at info@formicary.net

Formicary presents a ?Practical JMS? speech at the Java in Action conference

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:24:45 GMT

Release Date: 5th October 2005

Formicary Ltd, an IT consultancy firm specialising in providing solutions for the financial services industry, has accepted an invitation to speak tomorrow at the Java in Action conference hosted by TheSeverSide.com. The conference aims to provide ‘an intimate environment that's ideal for absorbing practical knowledge and sharing tips and advice on how to avoid development pitfalls.'

As part of the technical sessions, Formicary's Christopher Pearson and Philip Miller have been asked to speak on ‘Practical JMS'. The talk will focus on enterprise usage of JMS, first covering the basics and then leading on to a discussion on the prevalence of JMS in the enterprise market and the need to integrate with existing infrastructures. Once usage patterns have been discussed, the bulk of the session will then focus on a practical approach to JMS providers.

The discussion will be vendor-neutral and will cover of a number of common and popular providers, from well-established industry heavyweights, like MQSeries, through to lesser-known vendors and also a number of open source offerings. The merits and pitfalls of each will then be discussed and Christopher and Philip will offer advice on how to ensure that JMS applications will smoothly survive the transition from one provider to another.

About Formicary

Formicary is an information technology consultancy that specialises in building integrated applications/solutions to maximise business efficiency and streamline business processes for the Financial Services industry.

Founded in 2000, Formicary brings together a world class team of talented and dedicated professionals with industry experience and understanding covering front to back office in equities, fixed income and derivatives. This knowledge, coupled with technical excellence ranging from legacy client/server to cutting edge technologies, enables Formicary to offer innovative and sophisticated solutions to help clients improve their productivity and increase their return on investment.

Formicary has offices in Europe and North America. For more information, please visit www.formicary.net or contact us at info@formicary.net

Articles on 'J2EE' and 'Open source' by Formicary's CTO Hani Suleiman

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:24:45 GMT

Hani Suleiman is the CTO of Formicary, he is also a developer on a number of popular open source projects. Hani has published several articles on J2EE and open source topics, for the Java Developer Journal and other publications.

Read about Hani's opinion on Exposing J2EE Urban Myths or his Live and Let Live article.