MEDIA RELEASE PR36169
Microsoft Announces Next-Generation Financial Messaging Solution to Simplify Payments Processing
and Integration to SWIFTNet
HONG KONG, Sept. 17 /PRNewswire-AsiaNet/ --
New Microsoft offering lowers the cost of messaging for
corporate treasuries and financial services firms.
Microsoft Corp. today announced the Financial Messaging Service Bus, a
componentized financial services industry integration solution built upon the
highly acclaimed Microsoft BizTalk Server 2009. By providing pre-built
service components, the Financial Messaging Service Bus simplifies
mission-critical financial messaging for banks, payments processors and other
financial institutions, and provides a solution platform for Microsoft
technology partners. The Financial Messaging Service Bus not only applies to
SWIFT or payments, but is extensible across all financial messaging systems
as an integration framework allowing new solutions to be built and to
co-exist with legacy applications as part of a technology renewal program.
The Financial Messaging Service Bus supports Microsoft BizTalk Accelerator
for SWIFT, which has been awarded the SWIFTReady Financial EAI 2009 label -
thereby achieving six consecutive years of SWIFT certification. The
announcement was made at SWIFT's Sibos 2009, the industry's premier global
financial services forum.
The Financial Messaging Service Bus cuts the cost of development, and
speeds up the implementation process by providing reusable service-oriented
architecture (SOA) components to simplify financial messaging integration,
rather than requiring extensive onsite process engineering. It saves
financial services industry clients and technology solutions partners
substantial time and money in building and implementing payments and capital
markets solutions.
"Financial messaging and integration are becoming commoditized - and
should be," said Andy Schmidt, research director for Global Payments at
TowerGroup. "Banks need a simpler, more cost-effective way to re-engineer
payments processes but should be ensuring that they don't reinforce silos.
There is a real need to use out-of-the-box components that reduce the
complexity of integration, and that both build on and with existing
technology, to avoid building costly technology islands."
The Financial Messaging Service Bus utilizes the Microsoft BizTalk Server
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) Toolkit for data transformation and transaction
workflow management, and extends the standard ESB to add audit trail and
business activity monitoring specific to financial services. Furthermore,
Financial Messaging Service Bus components can be integrated easily with
Microsoft Office products, including Excel and SharePoint, for a complete
operations management and business intelligence solution.
"Financial messaging is the cornerstone for technology renewal in banks
and other financial services firms," said Susan Hauser, vice president of
Worldwide Financial Services at Microsoft. "Secure and reliable transaction
delivery is essential to financial services firms, but technology solutions
must also be cost-effective to implement and manage. Our long-standing
partnership with SWIFT, and our commitment to support technology partners,
uniquely positions us to provide these reliable and cost-effective solutions
to all financial institutions."
In the past year Microsoft has added BizTalk Server support for Alliance
Lite, thereby enabling SWIFTNet connectivity across the Internet.
"This new Microsoft financial messaging solution offering underscores the
continuing strength of our global partnership," said Gottfried Leibbrandt,
head of markets for SWIFT. "With this announcement, Microsoft demonstrates
its continuing commitment to SWIFT clients and the global financial services
community."
"Financial messaging is the basis for interoperability among banks in the
global financial services community," said Darrell Cavens, director for
BizTalk Server at Microsoft. "Microsoft is pleased to advance its
relationship with SWIFT to bring world-class products to an industry that
demands mission-critical, standards-based solutions."
The Financial Messaging Service Bus is currently available to all
customers through select Microsoft financial services community partners.
Zlatko Jegdic, eBusiness director of Saga, a longstanding partner of
Microsoft in Europe, commented, "As a Gold Certified Microsoft partner, we
look to leverage the technology stack for client solutions. The components
delivered with the Financial Messaging Service Bus allow us to allocate more
resources to developing value-add solution functionality and spend less time
on messaging integration for our clients."
"Customers can lower the cost of financial messaging by simplifying the
way payments processes are developed," said Andy Orent, director, Banking and
Capital Markets, Financial Services Industry, HP. "Microsoft's platform
aligns with HP's payments architecture, known as Integration Framework for
Payments (IF4P), which allows customers to help manage cost and accelerate
growth."
Financial messaging is a commodity service within payments and capital
markets processing, and the Financial Messaging Service Bus is designed to
provide a simpler, configurable approach to messaging that delivers
significant implementation and operational efficiencies for financial
institutions.
"One consistent challenge we see across the securities industry is
streamlining the workflow and mapping between FIX and SWIFT messages," said
Kevin Houstoun, chairman of Rapid Addition Ltd. and co-chairman of the Global
Technical Committee for FIX Protocol Ltd. "Technology such as Microsoft's
Financial Messaging Service Bus middleware and Rapid Addition's FIX Shortcut
for Financial Messaging Service Bus holds great promise in overcoming this
challenge, as it allows banks and brokers to automate these processes at a
lower total cost than traditional software."
With the Financial Messaging Service Bus, Microsoft addresses the need
for a systemic approach to messaging integration across the financial
services industry. As a result, banks now can further leverage an investment
in BizTalk Server as an infrastructure for payments and SWIFT messaging - and
extend that to support new financial applications in any geographic location.
Microsoft's Financial Messaging Service Bus delivers a number of benefits
that lower the cost of messaging for corporate treasuries and financial
services firms:
- By providing pre-built service components, Financial Messaging Service
Bus simplifies mission-critical financial messaging for banks, payments
processors and other financial institutions, and provides a solution
platform for Microsoft technology partners.
- Financial Messaging Service Bus leverages the BizTalk Enterprise
Service Bus (ESB) Toolkit data transformation and transaction workflow
management, and extends the standard ESB to add audit trail and
business activity monitoring specific to financial services.
- Financial Messaging Service Bus greatly improves time to market
for many complex solutions in the banking and capital markets
industries. Although applicable in many financial messaging scenarios,
one key area is simplifying the integration to SWIFT for payment and
FIX applications.
Additional information can be found at
About Microsoft in Financial Services
Microsoft's Financial Services Group provides software that helps
financial firms transform the customer, employee and operations experience so
they can maximize opportunities for increased market share and profitability.
Microsoft software helps empower people and IT staff within financial firms -
and across key focus areas such as advisor platforms, channel renewal,
insurance value chain, enterprise risk management and compliance, and
payments. Through a combination of Microsoft- and partner-provided solutions,
customers enable their employees to turn data into insight, transform ideas
into action and turn change into opportunity. More information about
Microsoft's Financial Services Group can be found at
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) is the worldwide leader in
software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize
their full potential.
SOURCE: Microsoft Corp.
CONTACT: Wendy Grover of Microsoft,
+1-425-705-7609;
or Chanda Gathani of Metia,
+44-795-11-63615,
chanda.gathani@metia.com
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