DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY /    ( Table of Contents )

Systems/Enterprise:

GRID SPEEDS UP RISK ANALYTICS IN NEW SOLUTION

Wall Street Systems Inc, a provider of global treasury and capital markets solutions, is launching Release 4.1 of The Wall Street System treasury and capital markets solution at DWT 2004. Release 4.1 incorporates major functional developments for front office sales and trading activities, new risk management capabilities and further enhancements to its market leading back office functionality. It also incorporates several major new technology enhancements focused on performance, controls, ease of use and disaster recovery.

Release 4.1 addresses three important business imperatives, giving clients a robust technical solution to address wide ranging regulatory and compliance requirements; the ability to drive down Total Cost of Ownership from technology and operations and the technology to scale and generate new revenues and new channels to market.

Release 4.1 of The Wall Street System treasury and capital markets solution incorporates a number of technical advances, including support for Oracle 9i, HP Integrity, Solaris 9 and Linux. As part of the commitment by Wall Street Systems to continuous quality improvement, new Software Control and Maintenance Systems have been included in the release. There is also an increased focus on the optimization of new diagnostic tools, including a new user interface, to help support teams pro-actively monitor and efficiently manage system performance in a complex, real time, global trading context.

Speaking about Release 4.1, Garfield Hayes, head of client research and strategy, said, "We recognize organizations have increased transaction volumes, user levels and complex global structures requiring high availability scalable solutions and Release 4.1 has evolved to meet these challenges. With this release of The Wall Street System we discussed the key requirements of our clients and looked at the new regulations to ensure that Release 4.1 is the benchmark for the next generation of capital markets and treasury solutions."

Release 4.1 incorporates an integration solution that extends and enhances the number of standard API interfaces supported and allows external systems to easily communicate with The Wall Street System treasury and capital markets solution. The new APIs also allow clients to feed real-time or batch data into the system with full automatic validation.

In formal performance benchmarking studies undertaken with technology partners, Release 4.1 of The Wall Street System surpassed previous market leading results with peak loads exceeding 45,000 per hour. Particular focus has been on real time risk analytics, with scalable Grid computing techniques being used to achieve major performance improvements. Full risk analytics on complex option portfolios with 2,000 trades can now be performed in less than 30 seconds. These improvements enable clients to manage global, cross-asset class books containing volume vanilla instruments and structured products in real time, 24-7. The benefits of Grid computing in the financial services industry will be among the topics covered at Gt'04 (www.gt04.com), being held May 24-26 in Philadelphia.

Release 4.1 delivers a wide range of improved controls across the whole system to meet the need for greater audit control, clear reporting and effective risk management due to increased scrutiny from regulators and the Sarbanes Oxley Act. Reporting on transaction life cycle and workflow events has been extended to track business activity and satisfy compliance checks. In addition, enhanced and additional reconciliation tools ensure that risk reporting and financial statements can be easily audited and approved.

Release 4.1 incorporates many new features that address transparency and ease of use, vital to any solution used in complex global financial markets. Several new Trader Home Pages, provide a trader-centric view of all necessary information, including trade capture, trade blotter, market data, risk and P&L analytics. Support has also been enhanced to assist sales desks with complex deal structuring and fund management activities. All these developments ensure that users focus on the markets and client relationships and less on systems and data capture.