26/01/2007

Arcontech unveils MiFID-ready components at User Group.

Arcontech – a leading developer of real-time market data software – at its user group meeting yesterday (Thursday 25 January) unveiled full information detailing how its CityVision suite can facilitate compliance with MiFID (Market in Financial Instruments Directive).

Capabilities explained and demonstrated were:

• Construction of per-venue market depth (level 2) order books;
• Price and symbology normalisation;
• Pan-European best bid/offer display; and
• Pan-European arbitrage alerting.

Andrew Miller, Arcontech’s managing director, said: “We’ve had a busy quarter with several new orders, and were delighted to have been selected as the data aggregation and value-added processing partner by a number of leading players from the investment banking, vendor and broking communities. Arcontech’s tool-kit approach enabled us to deliver these projects against aggressive timescales despite a variety of quite different requirements.”

Andrew, who is an active member of various MiFID-related working parties (including several subgroups of the MiFID Joint Working Group), demonstrated at the Arcontech User Group how its CityVision StarNet suite maps onto the model proposed by the real-time market data subgroup. Specifically, the suite addresses the requirements of investment firms, data aggregators, data distributors and service providers in achieving compliance for three important areas of MiFID: pre-trade quotes; post-trade reporting; and best execution.

The session was well attended by representatives from data vendors, network providers, financial institutions and end-users, and sparked interesting discussion on subjects such as Chi-x, Equiduct, projects Boat and Turquoise, as well as yet-to-be-announced initiatives.

Andrew Miller added: “Our work for clients over the Christmas period reaffirmed the inherent flexibility of the CityVision system, and stands us in good stead for the impending avalanche of MiFID projects that will be hitting the market shortly.”

11/12/2006

Andrew Miller, CEO of Arcontech, the supplier of real-time data distribution systems and desktop integration software announced today his prediction of greatly increased revenues from CityVision Excelerator, its flagship product for global real-time data publishing based on Microsoft Excel.

The Excelerator suite allows traders, analysts and other users of market data to publish and exchange data between spreadsheets in true real-time across the globe. According to Miller, it’s like instant messaging with the added ability to manipulate and visualise data in real-time using the full power of Excel.

Following the launch of the latest version in August this year, Excelerator is licensed for use by dozens of firms at thousands of positions globally. It is also ‘white-labelled’ by data vendors as part of their own desk-top offering.

Miller again: “We’re seeing particular interest as a replacement for the excel add-ins typically bundled with vendor platforms, where the user requirement doesn’t extend to a full market data terminal and where expensive exchange data is not business critical. Massive savings and increased flexibility and reliability come from using Excelerator for publishing of internally generated data. Add to this our ability to supplement or replace vendor technology with our global real-time middleware and you have a near perfect scenario – cheaper, faster, better data with full integration with incumbent platforms where required.

“Our unique approach means that there is no faster product for large scale spreadsheet applications. Whilst we support RTD, this is not as fast or feature-rich as our approach and has the disadvantage of incompatibility with earlier versions of Excel, still prevalent in many organisations.”

Excelerator supports pages (including shredding), records, chains and tickers in true real-time, automatically adjusting for chain content and size changes, signaling stale data, source and service failure, so users are aware when data may be suspect. It also has significant advantages over other products in the market place, such as: intelligent traffic management; advanced user interface features, including up/down tick and trend highlighting; true resilience with hot-standby recovery from network failure; and flexible built-in translation between different field naming schemas.

Arcontech will be announcing further ground-breaking enhancements to the product for the New Year.

13/11/2006

Provider of market information services in the finance sector KTS PLC (AIM: KTS) is adding real-time equity prices, news and other company data from Virt-x and Plus Markets to MarketTerminal, its live market data service. Access to information from the additional exchanges will be available on MarketTerminal from early next year at no additional subscription cost to users.

The two exchanges are becoming increasingly established with the UK trading community, and have been added to MarketTerminal to ensure market participants have a complete picture of all trading activity in the London equity markets.

Plus Markets currently trades over 800 small and mid-cap company shares, representing a combined market capitalisation of over £145 billion, while trading on Virt-x, a cross-border trading platform, had a trading turnover of almost £50 billion for pan-European equities in 2005. With the focus of MarketTerminal solely for users working and trading in the UK market, KTS will no longer be providing information from US and other non-London-based exchanges from January 2007.

Dr Marc Pinter-Krainer, Chief Executive of KTS PLC, said:

“The London equity markets are changing rapidly, and with the introduction of the new MiFID directive towards the end of next year there will be further acceleration in changing market requirements. The beauty of our technology is that MarketTerminal is a very flexible product which will always keep up with the times and have the content that our clients really need. With the addition of Plus Markets and Virt-x, we believe MarketTerminal will offer the most complete picture of London-traded equities and be the best value product on the market.”

01/11/2006

Arcontech, a leading developer of real-time market data software, has won an award for the most innovative real-time data management solution.

Financial-I magazine, together with leading analyst firms and consultants from the wholesale banking industry, selected Arcontech to receive the award at the Leaders in Innovation Awards on 9 November.

The awards were decided based upon product innovation over the last 12 to 18 months, cost effectiveness of solutions in terms of implementation and deployment, potential business benefits, ease of implementation, and the ability to tackle specific business issues and problems.

Andrew Miller, managing director at Arcontech, said: “Recognition from such a prestigious publication is always welcome, as it proves that the teamwork, hard graft and strategic significance of CityVision StarNet have not gone unnoticed. In this case it is perhaps even more gratifying since we did not make our own entry with over-inflated product puff – the selection was entirely the choice of analysts and other professionals who have experience of best-of-breed products from all quarters.

“The applicability and readiness of CityVision’s innovative data publication, aggregation and controlled re-distribution capabilities in a MiFID context are bound to have been factors in the decision.

This is the second award for Arcontech in 2006, having already won recognition for ‘Networking Initiative of the Year’ at The Banker’s 2006 awards.

01/10/2006

Leading City software specialist upgrades product suite ready for MiFID.

Arcontech – a leading developer of real-time market data software – has today unveiled the latest addition to its cutting edge CityVision product: the StarNet Enterprise Status Navigator.

CityVision, Arcontech’s suite of software components for real-time data publishing, is well established and proven with major City institutions. CityVision’s StarNet components extend the suite to allow financial institutions to connect different networks and the internet to coordinate the immediate, simultaneous and secure transmission of market data between the networks and also internet users. It can deliver millions of messages per second, with latency as low as 45 microseconds.

The new Enterprise Status Navigator provides the IT support team (including outsourced support) with improved visibility of the system’s status, real-time content and usage. It will also support banks’ MiFID implementations (the forthcoming Market in Financial Instruments Directive) by making it far easier for them to trouble-shoot and check service quality when distributing data to numerous institutions simultaneously, rather than via data vendors or exchanges as at present.

Andrew Miller, the managing director of Arcontech, said: “This is an important addition to our CityVision suite, with many of the features coming in response to client feedback. In particular, it will allow our clients’ support teams, including outsourced and offshore support, to pretty much look at anything anytime from anywhere. Coupled with the extensive behind-the-scenes investment in our middleware, it will dramatically increase the effectiveness of support teams, reducing the time for resolving problems.

“The new functionality will also ease location of problems outside the StarNet, highlighting problems with source data, destination systems or the underlying network infrastructure.

“This new product was developed explicitly to support the requirements of MiFID and other large-scale business opportunities for our clients. A central tenet of MiFID is that banks will need to publish pre- and post-trade prices, and prove best execution. To manage this amount of data between multiple organisations banks will need sophisticated tools – and our new Enterprise Status Navigator provides an important component in a plug & play form.”

The new Enterprise Status Navigator provides:

• Reassurance of normal operation by showing the status of every server in a StarNet domain
• Simple drill-down navigation to problem areas to aid trouble-shooting
• Clear ‘traffic light’ indicators of status condition
• Real-time data ‘trace route’ to discover which people and/or applications are using what data at any instant
• Dynamic display of system status and performance for each key component
• User-definable templates and composite displays for individual preferences and scenarios
• All status data available via APIs (Application Program Interface) and SNMP (System Network Management Protocol) methods to allow full integration with 3rd party monitoring systems

08/09/2006

Arcontech, a leading supplier of real-time data distribution systems and desktop integration software has announced a free trial of CityVision JStation, giving access to teletext pages over the internet.

JStation is a browser-delivered ‘thin client’ desktop for real-time market data display. JStation is vendor independent, one of the many feeds it supports is teletext generated from the various TV channels or by other CityVision real-time systems. JStation allows multiple teletext pages to be displayed conveniently in a browser. Colin Bootle, the JStation designer at Arcontech said “This (product) is ideal for sports and betting houses, as there is no longer a need for a separate TV for each page or channel. Instead, an unlimited number of teletext pages can be viewed side-by-side, from multiple sources. There is no need to wait for sub-pages to cycle round – they too can be viewed instantly. Updates are in real-time, so it’s faster than FastText!”

JStation is not limited to teletext. It can display all the data handled by Arcontech’s CityVision – including the major vendors plus internally sourced data. Teletext demonstrates that Arcontech is able to deal with unusual feeds in the same consistent manner that it handles market data feeds. JStation can display pages, quotes, tables etc, whilst CityVision servers provide page building, shredding and calculation from multiple sources.

Traditional market data displays can be tedious to install, configure, maintain, permission and support, as well as expensive. JStation removes these issues – users simply point their browsers at the appropriate website (see trial details below). All configuration and permissioning is done centrally with nothing stored on the user’s machine. The teletext trial gives users permission just to see teletext pages, unaware that other users may have permission to see exchange feeds or other market data.

Maintenance is equally simple – to update all users with the latest version simply update the version on the website. Andrew Miller, managing director at Arcontech added: “JStation is ideal for providing remote and ‘off-floor’ users with a market data display, minimizing deployment and support costs and eliminating high charges for internal data distribution”.

To sign-up for the JStation teletext trial, simply visit Arcontech’s website at http://www.arcontech.com and select “Products” followed by “Live Teletext”.

31/07/2006

Arcontech, a leading supplier of real-time data distribution systems and desktop integration software has announced the latest release of its object oriented ‘add-in’ technology for Microsoft Excel, CityVision Excelerator.

The Excelerator suite allows traders, analysts and other users of market data to receive, manipulate and re-publish data in true real-time, with sophisticated traffic management and user presentation features.

The latest version includes some significant advances over other products in the market place. Amongst these are: intelligent traffic management; advanced user interface features, including up/down tick and trend highlighting; true resilience with hot-standby recovery from network failure; and flexible built-in translation between different field naming schemas.

Andrew Miller, managing director of Arcontech said: “Excelerator is one of those great products we’ve had for so long that we almost forget to tell people about it. Built from our core real-time objects, it automatically inherits the incredible reliability and speed of our real-time middleware. Add to this its object oriented approach to Excel and the result is something that outperforms others by a margin”.

Excelerator supports pages (including shredding), records, chains and tickers in true real-time, automatically adjusting for chain content and size changes, signaling stale data, source and service failure, so users are aware when data may be suspect.

A typical application for Excelerator is to provide global capability for data contribution and reception, replacing or augmenting other market data desktops where speed, accuracy and control of data is critical, and where cost and flexibility are key issues. Miller again: “With 100 or so firms using Excelerator, there can be no doubt about its relevance. Firms need to keep their costs and data under control, without losing reliability or flexibility. The fact that Excelerator links seamlessly with CityVision StarNet means that issues of authentication, entitlements, firewalls and proxies, etc are all resolved ‘out of the box’ so implementation can be as fast as the customer can move.”

Excelerator is currently in Beta test in the City and expected to ship in August.

20/06/2006

A major vendor of real-time market data terminal services has gone live with Arcontech’s CityVision StarNet real-time market data aggregator, supporting pan-European data contributions from the investment banking community.

The StarNet system went into production earlier this year and is currently receiving real-time data content from about a dozen banks, primarily fixed-income data. The system is extensible to receive instruments in any asset class, from hundreds of contributors and to provide controlled re-distribution.

This announcement follows Arcontech’s recent success in the ‘networking initiative of the year’ category at The Banker magazine’s technology awards earlier this month.

Andrew Miller, managing director of Arcontech said: “We are particularly pleased to be working with another major data vendor handling contributions aggregation. It vindicates our extensive R&D spend and shows that our software is consistently as reliable, flexible and extensible as we designed it to be.”

The contract was awarded after a very thorough and comprehensive proof of concept project, designed to show that Arcontech’s existing product could succeed where the competition had failed. Miller again: “We knew we had a good chance when we were able to deploy, within a few days, a system with all the key features and facilities required. From then the system rolled smoothly into production, with minimal work to achieve integration with the existing ticker plant.”

The CityVision Aggregator installation is exactly the same product that could be installed by others to support pan-European MiFID data aggregation. It can ingest data from many sources and protocols, including spreadsheets, existing de-facto standards and FIX. It also has comprehensive APIs and a full authentication and entitlements system. These, together with its seamless integration with the CityVision StarNet distribution system mean that it is an ideal solution for many MiFID real-time data requirements, from the smallest “one in, one out” to the very largest ticker plant applications.

04/06/2006

Following its successes in the 2004 and 2005 awards, Arcontech’s CityVision real-time market data platform has again been selected in the 2006 honours list, this time in fiercely contested ‘Networking Initiative of the Year’ category.

In the 2004 awards, CityVision won the award for ‘Best Technology to the Sell-Side’, with its Multiple Vendor Contribution System (MVCS). Last year Arcontech’s CityVision StarNet was ‘highly commended’, for its StarNet global inter-networking capabilities.

This year Arcontech’s award winning product is the Multiple Destination Publishing System (MDPS), a radical and innovative development of MVCS. It provides the financial community with fast, flexible and cost-effective publishing of real-time market data to any destination.

MDPS builds on the solid infrastructure technology of CityVision StarNet empowering clients with unprecedented flexibility and dynamicism in their data publishing operations. It is the result of continual improvements, accounting for technological changes, client feedback, regulation and compliance issues. It addresses the increasing demand for low latency, direct market and peer-to-peer publishing in an increasingly quality-conscious and cost-averse market.

“We are delighted to follow the last two years’ awards with this recognition, again in the networking category,” said Andrew Miller, managing director of Arcontech. “It further endorses our progress towards an enterprise market data platform and acknowledges the hard work and innovation of our developers.

MDPS is lining up to be an important technology to address many of the real-time data requirements of MiFID, the European Market in Financial Instruments Directive. Miller again: “CityVision provides proven product to satisfy three key areas of MiFID: pre-trade pricing; post-trade reporting; and price monitoring for best execution. What ever route firms want to take for publishing, we have the product so they can send and the market can receive”

This is the fourth annual The Banker Technology Awards. The awards recognize best of breed, innovation and success in financial technology. The awards are designed to provide financial institutions and their clients around the world with an objective analysis of the technological expertise that exists within key business areas. The Awards highlights those solutions and projects that have made a real difference over the past 12 months.

Judges for The Banker Technology Awards represent a cross section of financial technology expertise, drawn from consulting firms, investment banks and other specialists.

15/05/2006

KTS PLC, the provider of real-time financial information services, is launching its new PDA all-in-one mobile market data service package at this weekÕs Dealing with Technology (DWT) event in London.

The company will be showcasing the mobile version of its MarketTerminal market data service, aimed at financial market professionals. It is delivered on Hewlett PackardÕs iPAQ hw6515 Mobile Messenger, which comes with a range of high-spec features including full messaging capabilities, email access, GPS navigation and a camera.

KTSÕs package includes the iPAQ Mobile Messenger device free of charge, a relevant data and voice tariff and access to KTSÕs mobile MarketTerminal service. Subscription costs £90 per month, excluding exchange fees and VAT.

DWT is a one-day exhibition and seminar programme for front and middle office banking technology. It is taking place on Wednesday 17 May at the Brewery on LondonÕs Chiswell Street.

The mobile PDA version of MarketTerminal offers in-depth coverage of essential financial information, news, analytics and real-time prices. It covers 15 exchanges including the London Stock Exchange, New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, Euronext, and Deutsche Boerse. Subscribers can configure and receive live price and news alerts, access equities quotes in real time and monitor investment portfolios whilst on the move.

10/05/2006

Arcontech, a leading supplier of real-time market data price distribution and order routing technology today has expanded on its pan-European plans to facilitate compliance for financial institutions impacted by MiFID regulation.

Andrew Miller, Managing Director of Arcontech said: “Working with the MiFID Joint Working Group, we’ve identified three key areas where our CityVision StarNet global real-time market data platform provides important components of the complete solution.”

These are in the areas of pre-trade price transparency, post-trade reporting and best execution. Arcontech is currently engaging with partners and clients to offer services across Europe to address the MiFID requirements.

It will be compulsory for “Systematic Internalisers” (SI) (for example, firms that cross trades on their own book) to make public, in real-time, firm prices that are close to the market. CityVision makes it simple for SIs to publish directly or via intermediaries.

All firms trading in regulated markets will be required to report trades “as close to real-time as possible”. In the UK, the London Stock Exchange currently supports this function but under MiFID firms can choose other channels for reporting, which may lead to competition and cost reduction.

It is likely that one or more alternative Data Aggregators will seize this opportunity. CityVision is designed to publish simultaneously to as many different destinations as required and so ideal for both pre and post trade reporting, however many reporting channels there may be.

CityVision also supports translation, normalisation and aggregation of data from multiple sources, as well as onward distribution of data to multiple destinations and so is highly suitable for the central hub or ‘ticker plant’ operations of the aggregators.

Miller again: “We can support many different protocols, so integration with existing systems should be straightforward. For those already enabled or moving towards emerging standards, our FIX and FAST capabilities will enable rapid deployment.”

It is also essential for both the buy and sell side to be able to see this data to know where the market is, in order to obtain and/or prove “best execution”.

StarNet offers many options for viewing and integrating with data. It supports many publishing paradigms, including legacy feed emulation, web distribution, and interfaces to platforms like RMDS, Excel and databases etc. An API in various languages supports custom integration, providing great flexibility at every stage in the publishing life cycle.

01/03/2006

Driven by a significant market demand for highly efficient, quickly scaleable, very low latency and dynamically configurable data management systems Arcontech’s CityVision product suite is fast gaining a reputation as the system of choice for a range of high profile financial institutions.

Arcontech has made major investment in strategic developments to strengthen the CityVision product for global deployment in mission critical operations. Features such as real-time re-configuration, improved user interfaces, more detailed status information with full SNMP integration and zero down-time support the 24/7 operation demanded by an increasing number of global clients.

Recent successes include the extension of an existing Multi Vendor Contribution System at a major global broker to include contributions to Bloomberg and an integrated distribution hub in Asia, as well as being chosen by a major US Bank for its vendor contributions. Additionally the CityVision MVCS System is currently being trialled by a Tier 1 European bank.

Arcontech’s Managing Director, Andrew Miller comments: “I am delighted with these recent successes. CityVision has been designed as a flexible, scaleable and robust data platform. Our existing and new clients use CityVision to future proof themselves against anticipated growth in the areas of data ingestion, data contribution and data distribution which is being driven by regulatory changes such as MiFID. We will continue to enhance CityVision to meet our clients’, and the market’s requirements”

08/12/2005

Arcontech, a leading supplier of real-time market data price distribution and order routing technology, focused its regular user group meeting last week on MiFID, the new European Markets in Financial Instruments Directive for price transparency.

MiFID requires investment firms to publish firm pre-trade quotes and to be prepared and able to trade on them. Additionally, all trades must be reported “as close to real-time as possible”. This information must be readily available to intermediaries to help prove that they are achieving ‘best execution’ for their clients.

Andrew Miller, managing director of Arcontech presented to client and partner representatives from its user base including major vendors, investment banks, treasury and brokers. He demonstrated how the CityVision StarNet enterprise architecture maps on to the draft model resulting from work with the MiFID joint working group (JWG). He explained: “StarNet addresses each area of real-time requirement and adds value in the total supply chain. It is applicable for both pre-trade and post-trade reporting. Coupled with its aggregation and distribution capabilities, it’s equally suited for use by central utilities, contributors and end-users.”

Bob Fuller, co-chair of the JWG commented: “We welcome active participation in formulation of MiFID solutions. Arcontech has worked with the JWG from the start.”

StarNet is capable of taking in contributions from hundreds of sources and aggregating to form a single data feed. It supports extremely low latency publishing and many paradigms, including legacy feeds and web distribution. It has interfaces to platforms like RMDS, Excel, databases etc. and an API in C++, ActiveX, COM, Java and .net for custom integration.

21/11/2005

Arcontech, a leading supplier of real-time market data price distribution and order routing technology today announced its plans to help City firms address their compliance issues using the highly flexible CityVision market data platform.

Speaking in advance of the CityVision user group meeting to be held later this month, Andrew Miller, Managing Director of Arcontech said: “MiFID is one of the biggest challenges of our time and presents a great opportunity for existing and new players in the market. Arcontech’s approach is to provide a total solution to the real-time aspects of compliance.”

Miller cites the work of the Joint Working Group and the evolving model for compliance in pre-trade quotes, post-trade reporting and best execution. “There remain several unanswered questions but it is clear that these are three primary areas of impact”.

So called “Systematic Internalisers (SIs), mainly sell-side market makers, must publish firm prices and be prepared and able to trade on them. These prices must be readily available to intermediaries to help prove that they are achieving ‘best execution’ for their clients. However, they will be reluctant, if not unable, to collect all the prices from all the SIs. Therefore data aggregators will be required ‘in the middle’ to ingest, normalise and redistribute data. These prices must also be available to other sell-side firms to ensure that their prices are close to the market.

All trades must also be reported “as close to real-time as possible”. This means that integration technology is required across the board. However, under MiFID firms can choose not to publish via exchanges. If sufficient firms chose an alternative route, the cost of real-time data could plummet as data becomes available free of exchange fees from alternative sources.

Miller again “StarNet addresses each area and adds value in the total supply chain. It is one of the most flexible contributions products available, so we’ll make publishing data simple for impacted firms. It is likely that one or more ‘utilities’ will emerge at the centre. StarNet is capable of taking in contributions from hundreds of sources and aggregating to form a single data feed, so its ideal for a MiFID utility. It also supports many publishing paradigms, including legacy feeds and web distribution, so is perfect for data distribution. For the receiver it has interfaces to platforms like RMDS, Excel, databases etc. and an API in various languages for custom integration, making life as easy as possible for all sizes of firm.”

17/11/2005

Knowledge Technology Solutions PLC (‘KTS’), provider of professional financial information services, is pleased to announce that Saheed Oyedele, 32, has been promoted to Head of Client Services.

Saheed has considerable experience in the market data industry, having worked at the London Stock Exchange and subsequently Thomson Financial during the past 15 years.

In his new role, Saheed, who joined KTS in January 2005, oversees KTS’s client service activities. These include building and maintaining client relations, on-site user training and helpdesk support. He reports directly to Chief Executive Marc Pinter-Krainer.

05/10/2005

Arcontech Ltd., the London-based developer of real-time data distribution and display systems, strengthened its development team earlier this month with the recruitment of Anant Aggarwal.

Aggarwal is an experienced developer who has worked around the world for companies such as Honeywell in Phoenix and India and Medcentre in Brazil.

Aggarwal is reporting directly to Andy Weber, head of technology at Arcontech and immediately will bring his experience to bear on various projects including a new development project for a major cross-border exchange and on-line trading systems.

Aggarwal has a strong technical background and is experienced in Microsoft technologies such as COM, MFC and ASP .Net which are at the core of many Arcontech products.

“Arcontech has a great staff retention record, but new blood is important for growth and fresh thinking”, says Andrew Miller, managing director at Arcontech. “Anant’s skills are already being put to good use helping to deliver solutions on time and to budget. We are very happy to welcome him on board.”

30/09/2005

Arcontech Ltd., the London-based developer of real-time data distribution and display systems, continues its expansion program with the appointment of business development manager, Ken Cordery.

Cordery is a senior sales professional with a long and successful track record in new business sales and business development. He will report to Andrew Miller, managing director of Arcontech, and work along side Declan Agnew, head of european sales.

Cordery has spent more than 20 years in the industry and has sold both front and back office solutions as well as treasury market data services. He gained extensive experience working with companies such as CSK Software, Tenfore and Cognotec and prior to that with the financial institution Citibank where he worked in FX and Global Treasury services.

In his new role, Cordery will be charged with helping to strengthen Arcontech’s position as an acknowledged market leader for real-time contributions and integrated distribution systems.

“We are continuing to strengthen our position in the London market whilst looking at increasing business on a global scale, currently working with a number of strategic partners” says Miller, “Ken will help this process by identifying and progressing more opportunities where our flexible and scalable StarNet components can add value and save costs for our clients.”

Cordery comments “I’m delighted to join the Arcontech team. Having worked for many years in the market data sector I am excited about the opportunity of building on the company’s reputation for rapid delivery of cost-effective solutions. I am looking forward to working with both new and the existing client base in order to accelerate Arcontech’s growth.”

01/08/2005

bet365, one of the UK’s leading betting and gaming firms, has rolled out Arcontech’s CityVision product to automate its betting price distribution to television based Teletext services, including Sky, Channel 4 and Aertel in Ireland.

The system integrates with bet365’s internal price generation system, allowing logical (record based) price data to be published in real-time to Teletext pages.

John Coates, Chief Executive of bet365 said “We needed a proven, flexible and robust solution to support our expansion and reduce overheads. Arcontech were able to demonstrate this”.

bet365 developers used the CityVision application programming interface to achieve tight integration, including completely automated price updates.

The system supports the various protocols in use by different Teletext service providers, offloading the technicalities and allowing bet365 to concentrate on their business.

A comprehensive page editor supports flexible layout of data across ‘template’ pages. Content can flow across many pages and can be arranged in multiple columns with colours and formatting to maximize impact of Teletext displays.

Once pages are activated, they can be routed to multiple destinations, each being kept up-to-date as close to real-time as the network will allow. Andrew Miller, Managing Director of Arcontech said: “We are delighted to be selected by bet365. This further increases the usage of our leading edge software in the top firms, both in sports and financial betting and trading. It’s a great example of a typical smooth roll-out of our product, with customisation undertaken by the client using our simple interfaces.

11/07/2005

Knowledge Technology Solutions PLC (KTS), provider of professional financial information services, has added extensive foreign exchange data to its standard ktsMarketTerminal subscription. The information is provided by ComStock Europe, part of Interactive Data (NYSE: IDC).

Users of ktsMarketTerminal now have access to live prices and exchange rates for more than 170 currencies, allowing them to keep up to date with the $1.3 billion global foreign exchange market. The data includes spot and forward rates, in addition to historical prices.

As well as the newly-added foreign exchange data, ktsMarketTerminal also provides real-time prices, news, fundamentals and analytics for 150,000 financial instruments listed on the major European and North American equities exchanges. Among the 15 exchanges ktsMarketTerminal covers are the London Stock Exchange, New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, Euronext, Deutsche Boerse and the Scandinavian exchanges. Subscribers can also access hundreds of international news stories every day from leading newswires Dow Jones and AFX.

Dr Marc Pinter-Krainer, Chief Executive of KTS, said:

“We encourage our subscribers to let us know if they would like access to any financial data not already available on ktsMarketTerminal. User feedback has shown a clear demand for foreign exchange prices which we’ve now added to the standard subscription.

“Adding new data to ktsMarketTerminal not only enhances the service we provide to existing clients, but also broadens its appeal to other market professionals.”

Mark Hepsworth, Managing Director of ComStock Europe, added:

“We are pleased that KTS has chosen to incorporate our GTIS foreign exchange data into its ktsMarketTerminal. The globally recognised quality of the GTIS data comes from the systematic selection of contributors from amongst the world’s leading market makers.”

01/07/2005

Hot on the heels of its recognition at The Banker technology awards ceremony this month, Arcontech is re-launching several of its prize-winning products in a drive to increase market awareness of its leading edge technologies.

First in line is the CityVision Excelerator add-in for Microsoft Excel, which enables spreadsheet users to get real-time data from multiple sources into their displays and calculations very efficiently.

Excelerator connects to any node in a global or local CityVision StarNet and allows authorised users to access any data to which they are entitled. This could be internal prices, data from other spreadsheets or data from external feeds, such as Reuters or Comstock. It allows complete hub-and-spoke or peer-to-peer real-time interchange between spreadsheets.

It also connects directly or via intelligent caching nodes to other real-time platforms such as Reuters Triarch and RMDS and requires little or no additional infrastructure.

Andrew Miller, Managing Director of Arcontech said: “We’re realised that Excelerator, one of our best products, is little known in its natural market place. It’s a proven and mature product with all the benefits of a full market data platform behind it, including data access control, stale data notification and, of course, Internet distribution.

Excelerator was first launched six years ago and has been continually upgraded. Now completely re-built on that latest CityVision API, Arcontech expects Excelerator to be successful in a number of dealing and off-floor scenarios where real-time data is required from a variety of sources, some which may not be supported by the incumbent platform, or where the costs of other solutions can’t easily be justified. Miller again: “If Excel is you thing, you may need nothing more. Think of it as Napster for market data”.

03/06/2005

Following it’s success in the 2004 awards, winning the award for ‘Best Technology to the Sell-Side’, Arcontech’s CityVision StarNet was ‘highly commended’ as ‘Networking Initiative of the Year’ at the third annual The Banker Technology Awards, presented last night in London at the Cafe Royal.

Arcontech’s award winning product, StarNet, is a global market data platform that provides reliable, real-time data publishing and gathering worldwide. It extends CityVision’s proven low-latency real-time middleware to wide area and global IP internetworks, enhancing globalised management, security and bandwidth efficiency and adding features for web server, browser and mobile phone integration as well as extremely efficient and robust real-time Excel support.

StarNet covers all the key bases of technology allowing ultimate user choice. Use of the product over the public Internet allows firms to complete projects – such as the setting up of a remote office – in a matter of days, without expensive development and consulting.

“We are delighted to follow last year’s win with this award in the networking category,” said Andrew Miller, managing director of Arcontech. “It further endorses StarNet’s progress as an enterprise market data platform and acknowledges the innovation of our developers, delivering cutting edge solutions to the financial community.”

This is the third The Banker Technology Awards. The awards recognize best of breed, innovation and success in financial technology. The Banker’s goal has been to highlight those vendors, large and small, who have made a real contribution to advancing shareholder value and customer service within financial institutions over the past 12 months. The Banker is part of the Financial Times Business Group.

Judges for The Banker Technology Awards represent a cross section of financial technology expertise. They include: Chris Skinner, CEO balatro, Founder Shaping Tomorrow Dan Barnes, Financial Systems Editor Wijnand de Kruijff, Deputy CEO ING Direct Clive Winchup, CIO Banca popolare di Milano Bo Harald, EVP Nordea Parveen Bansal, Business Analyst TowerGroup P.J. Digiammarino, Head of Global IT Customer Services, Barclays Capital Bob Fuller, Head of IT Strategy, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein Roberto Rivera, Intelligent Growth Ralph Silva, Senior Analyst, TowerGroup Europe Suresh Viswanathan, Senior Vice-President, Citigroup

01/06/2005

Reinforcing its commitment to enterprise level support in its award-winning CityVision StarNet market data platform, Arcontech has formally released the .net version of the application-programming interface for its global networking solution.

The .net API enables clients and third party developers to access the full functionality of CityVision from any of the Microsoft .net programming languages. This greatly reduces the time and costs to integrate with other systems and to produce value-added functions, utilising the full sophistication of the StarNet platform.

Andrew Miller, Managing Director of Arcontech said: “The API gives access to the full range of enterprise features in the platform. We develop all our applications using the API, so we know it works well. Many other firms have used the API to automate their live price publication, often taking only a few days.”

Arcontech announced the CityVision Page Contributor, its first product built using the .net API, earlier this year. Since then the API has been used by Arcontech clients and third party developers to integrate live pricing and vendor contribution systems.

API developers can write applications to receive real-time data from any StarNet data source to which they have access. This can include many data feeds, such as Reuters and Comstock, plus any source on a Reuter Triarch or RMDS platform. Applications can also contribute data in real-time, with the StarNet automatically listening for heartbeats and alerting data consumers by setting data stale if connections are lost or source applications fail. Contributed data can be sent straight to vendors such as Reuters and Bloomberg or re-published via StarNet or onto RMDS.

Apart from real-time market data, the API also gives access to detailed real-time status information from CityVision Server components or published by client applications. Access is subject to the authentication and entitlements systems that governs all CityVision applications.

The first published CityVision API was launched ten years ago as an ActiveX control, specifically for early VB developers. Since then versions for COM and Java have been developed and enhanced to keep pace with new platform features. Miller again: “It’s vital for our clients that we keep pace with technology trends and we think the .net platform is important strategically. This release packages years of expert development into an easy to use interface, so developers can concentrate on functionality, not infrastructure”.

01/05/2005

Arcontech has added a powerful new product to its CityVision product suite that improves visibility, control and ease of market data page creation and contribution to multiple destinations, including Vendors like Reuters and Bloomberg.

The new Page Contributor integrates fully with the CityVision StarNet global real-time infrastructure, supporting end-user entitlements and multiple domains. This greatly improves security, traceability and control of page contributions.

A comprehensive editor supports free typing and import of drag and drop from Word and Excel. Content flows across however many pages are needed, with warnings issued if text exceeds the number of allocated pages. Protected forms enable simple and rapid use of ‘template’ pages for standard announcements.

Multiple concurrent users are supported with system-wide page locking preventing accidental conflict.

Desk-top visibility and control is a key feature of the new product. Users can be profiled to be alerted to any system status changes or to problems with specific destinations only. This means that different workgroups need not be concerned with problems outside their areas. 24 hour monitoring and trouble-shooting is aided by comprehensive configurable email alerting.

Andrew Miller, Managing Director of Arcontech said: “We undertook this significant new development at the request of major clients, for whom page based contribution is a business-critical part of their operations. We have further plans for product improvement which our research shows will be important for other potential users.”

07/02/2005

Knowledge Technology Solutions PLC (KTS), provider of professional financial information services, has enhanced the news content of ktsMarketTerminal and ktsQuoteTerminal. Stories from leading European financial news agency AFX News have been added to the standard subscription.

ktsMarketTerminal provides real-time prices, news, fundamentals and analytics for 150,000 instruments listed on the major European and North American equities exchanges. In addition to other news sources already provided on the service, ktsMarketTerminal subscribers now also have access to 400-600 news stories daily from AFX International Focus, providing company news, stock market updates, economics, political and general news.

Users of KTS QuoteTerminal can also now read up to 500 UK business stories each day from AFX UK Focus which have been added as part of the standard QuoteTerminal service.

ktsMarketTerminal and ktsQuoteTerminal users are also offered the ability to upgrade to real-time professional AFX ProFeed news services.

The addition of AFX News helps to broaden the appeal of KTS’s market data services among financial professionals. To date, more than 120 client organisations subscribe to KTS’s services.

Dr Marc Pinter-Krainer, Chief Executive of KTS PLC, said:

“News is a vital element in investment decisions. AFX is a respected international news provider, supplying the market with comprehensive and concise corporate and economic news. From the positive feedback received, we know the AFX news services are helping our users make sense of the high volumes of financial information they have to process daily. We are delighted to offer AFX services as part of the standard subscription on both ktsMarketTerminal and ktsQuoteTerminal.”

Stefan Ploghaus, Managing Director of AFX News, added:

“AFX’s strength comes from the trust of professional investors worldwide, who read our news services to make better informed investment decisions and stay abreast of market events. We pride ourselves on the accuracy, speed and independence of our news stories. We are delighted that KTS’s growing subscriber base now has access to the valuable and comprehensive information we offer.”

John Manley, Editor-in-Chief of AFX News, added:

“AFX News provides unmatched scope: The AFX UK ProFeed guarantees to cover every listed company in the UK while the AFX International ProFeed covers all major global companies, markets and events with a special emphasis on Europe. We provide value and focus to our readers: we flash market moving news on all companies, irrespective of size, and our closeness to the market means we can concentrate on the news that moves share prices. AFX gives its readers the news they need, the instant they need it.”

20/01/2005

Knowledge Technology Solutions PLC (KTS), provider of professional financial information services, has added Financial Express funds data to its standard ktsQuoteTerminal subscription. It is the first such vendor to offer in-depth Financial Express funds data as part of its market data application service.

KTS QuoteTerminal offers real-time UK stockmarket prices and news, as well as analytics and market commentary, seamlessly integrated into a single complete package.

Users of KTS QuoteTerminal can now access information provided by Financial Express on more than 8,000 funds including Unit Trusts and Open Ended Investment Companies (OEICs). The data includes daily prices, performance comparisons, details of the fund and fund manager and a breakdown of its most significant holdings.

The addition of Financial Express funds data adds increased value to the comprehensive KTS QuoteTerminal service and further broadens its appeal to investment professionals. Already more than 120 client organisations currently subscribe to KTS QuoteTerminal.

Dr Marc Pinter-Krainer, Chief Executive of KTS, said:

“As a service provider we like to respond to clients’ requirements. The addition of comprehensive funds data from TrustNet to our QuoteTerminal service is a good example of our responsiveness. Initial client feedback on the new addition has been extremely positive.”

Michael Holland, Managing Director of Financial Express, added:

“As the leading supplier of fund information to the UK financial sector, we are pleased our data is now an integral part of the KTS QuoteTerminal package. “We believe that it will add further value to KTS QuoteTerminal, which is successfully carving out a growing market among professional investors in need of quality essential prices, news and financial information at sensible prices.”
About Knowledge Technology Solutions PLC

Knowledge Technology Solutions PLC is a leading provider of real-time market data solutions. KTS has been established in London’s financial district, the City, since 1999 and is a public company listed on the Alternative Investment Market of the London Stock Exchange (ticker symbol: KTS).

We are different because we are technology-driven. Our services are delivered to standard PCs, laptops and mobile devices without any new hardware, software or infrastructure. This is because they run on our highly resilient servers, and are simply displayed on Internet browsers, direct and without intervention from third parties.

Furthermore, we can do this via any network, including the Internet or an intranet connection. This is a very cost-effective way in which to access our services, and is extremely flexible in that clients can log on whether in the workplace or on the move.

Our service delivery approach offers unprecedented benefits across an enterprise. It enables immediate and transparent upgrades, resulting in significant cost savings for support and maintenance. It also enables financial professionals to connect, and get on with the business of making money.

Although cutting edge, this approach is proven: more than 130 client organisations currently subscribe to our market information service, ktsMarketTerminal.
About Financial Express

Financial Express was established in 1996 and is the main UK provider of fund/equity data and technology solutions to the fund sector. Financial Express collects all fund prices in the UK, as well as offshore fund prices, and is relied upon as the sole or main source of this data by data vendors, fund supermarkets, financial websites and financial advisers. Financial Express also collects and distributes fund factsheet information.

Financial Express website: http://www.financialexpress.net

Financial Express owns and operates http://www.trustnet.com (in-depth fund price, performance and factsheet information) and http://www.companyannouncements.net (equity news and capital events).

01/01/2005

Tradition, the global inter-dealer broker has chosen London-based real-time software specialist Arcontech to supply a solution to meet its requirement for a comprehensive, distributed market data publishing system.

Based on Arcontech’s award-winning CityVision StarNet architecture, the system will support traders in seven sites globally, including London, Lausanne, Paris, New York, Singapore, Tokyo and Hong Kong. StarNet will gather data from a wide variety of input mechanisms including Tradition’s electronic platforms, and distribute data to a comprehensive range of data vendors as well as back to Tradition’s desks.

Commenting on their decision, Dominique Velter, Strategic Marketing Director at Tradition said “Following a thorough and comprehensive evaluation we chose Arcontech and CityVision because they were able to demonstrate existing product that satisfied our immediate requirements, with flexibility and extensibility for the future.”

The project is on target, on time and on budget, and all milestone installations have been met.

Andrew Miller, Managing Director of Arcontech says: “We are delighted to be working with another highly respected player in the global financial markets. We see Tradition’s decision to use CityVision StarNet for such a business critical requirement as endorsing our position as a provider of world-class real-time systems. CityVision StarNet was designed for precisely the kind of requirement that Tradition have in mind now, and in the future”

01/01/2005

The City IT event on board the Aurora at the end of last year saw further support for the concept of a ‘free to members’ community for real-time market data.

A workshop, entitled ‘Whose data is it anyway?’ was presented by Andrew Miller, Managing Director of Arcontech. It discussed the feasibility, benefits and challenges of complementing the current vendor-based models with a cheaper service for certain classes of data.

In this vision, data would be provided and consumed free by contributors, instead of the current situation where vendors, exchanges and brokers can charge considerable sums for data, by virtue of their central position in the data flow. Rather than charging for data (and sometimes claiming copyright), the community would levy a service fee to cover running costs.
Miller argued that, historically, the vendors have provided a valuable service and continue to do so in areas like news and price visibility for OTC markets. “They have developed highly profitable businesses, rightly building on their distribution networks and defending their embedded positions. However, I’m sure they and their customers see the future in higher value services, not commodity pricing data.”

Today’s technology and wide-spread global networking make it much easier to collate and share data. Given that contributors generally give their prices willingly to the vendors and pay to receive others’ data, there should be little objection in principle to the concept.

A key potential driver is European legislation. By April 2006 additional pan-European trade and pre-trade reporting mechanisms must be in place. The increase in traffic could be immense and it is not clear that the traditional vendors have the capacity or plans in place to address the requirement.

The session was attended by representatives across the wholesale community, including major brokers, banks and building societies. A straw poll at the start of the session indicated about 10% of attendees thought it was possible, with 30% willing to participate if it existed. At the conclusion 100% agreed it was possible, though not without its own challenges.

Commenting on the outcome, Miller said: “It’s interesting to see the change in attitudes. The threads of technology, expectation, cost and legislation finally seem to be coming together, taking our StarNet community vision closer to reality. The capabilities of CityVision in both data acquisition and distribution make it an important piece of the solution”.

01/11/2004

A presentation given at the Arcontech user group meeting last Thursday sparked some interesting discussion. A high profile user put forward a well argued case showing the three-way benefits of the Arcontech hosted service: lower running costs and more reliable services for the contributor; lower collection, comms and maintenance costs for the Vendor; and increased revenue for the service provider. Major benefits for business continuity planning, relocation and improved time-to-market were also identified.

Representatives from Reuters, Telerate and Comstock joined the debate, as well as several contributors. A number of counter arguments were put forward, not least worries that the client/vendor relationship could be diminished. However, there was ultimate agreement that the idea was sound and that with suitable assurances over service reliability, latency, availability and security there could be all-round benefit. The key challenges were seen as gaining critical mass and changing Vendor attitudes.

Andrew Miller, Managing Director of Arcontech said: “I see this as a clear win-win-win scenario. Neither Vendor nor client has anything to lose from this approach except direct cost and overheads. We are a technology company and will not interfere with any client/Vendor relationship – we merely facilitate a better technical implementation.”

The community concept is built entirely on Arcontech’s CityVision StarNet real-time products and hosted in resilient centres with guaranteed up time. StarNet technology allows controlled interaction between multiple domains and is highly scaleable. Its built in interfaces and multiple platform APIs mean that contributions from most sites can be implemented in short timescales with minimal effort.

24/08/2004

In its latest six-monthly survey of the regulatory news market, Knowledge Technology Solutions PLC (KTS) exposes the continued reduction in popularity of the London Stock Exchange’s Regulatory News Service (RNS). Between February and August 2004, 71.05% of the 89,189 regulatory news announcements issued were distributed by RNS compared to 73.78% in the previous six months. KTS’s regular survey shows that RNS’s share has steadily fallen since the market was opened up to other primary information providers (PIPs) in April 2002.

In June, Waymaker merged with Romeike Media Intelligence (another subsidiary of its parent company Sweden-based Observer AB group) which did not have a regulatory news service. The combined business, which has retained the Romeike name, was the biggest beneficiary of RNS’s decreased market share over the last six months. Its portion of the regulatory news market has leapt from 5.59% to 8.31% during the period which builds on its 0.86% increase in the previous six months following a reduction of its charges for news and results announcements.

PR Newswire has the second biggest share of the market but there is still a significant gap to the market leader, the London Stock Exchange’s RNS service. In the last six months it has handled 11.84% of regulatory news announcements, a fairly modest increase on its 11.12% share in the six months before. The only other PIP to grow its slice of the regulatory news market was Hugin which controls a lowly 0.69%, up from 0.56% in February.

Other than RNS, BusinessWire was the only PIP to see its share of the market fall between February and August. It dropped from 8.56% to 7.72%. PIMS, the smallest PIP by volume of announcements distributed maintained its 0.39% segment of the market.

The source of KTS’s data is its UK live financial news and data service, QuoteTerminal, which carries comprehensive regulatory news from all PIPs.

Dr Marc Pinter-Krainer, Chief Executive of KTS, said:

“Unsurprisingly RNS’s large market share has continued to fall but it is still the out and out market leader by volume of announcements distributed. Perhaps more interestingly, Romeike has overtaken BusinessWire to become the third largest PIP and, if it continues to expand at the same rate, it may well threaten PRNewswire’s place as number two in the market.”

02/06/2004

Arcontech’s CityVision StarNet has beaten the competition to win the award for ‘Best Technology to the Sell-Side’ at this year’s second annual The Banker Technology Awards.

Arcontech’s winning product, StarNet, is a global market data platform that provides reliable, real-time data publishing and gathering worldwide. It extends CityVision’s proven real-time middleware to wide area and global IP internetworks, enhancing globalised management, security and bandwidth efficiency and adding features for web server and browser integration.

StarNet covers all the key bases of technology allowing ultimate user choice. Use of the product over the public Internet allows firms to complete projects – such as the setting up of a remote office – in a matter of days, without expensive development and consulting.

“We are very pleased to win such a prestigious award,” said Andrew Miller, managing director of Arcontech. “This endorsement of StarNet is a tribute to Arcontech’s vision, and a tremendous accolade to our development team, acknowledging their contribution as skilled, responsive and innovative, delivering cutting edge solutions to the financial community.”

This is the second The Banker Technology Awards. The awards recognize best of breed, innovation and success in financial technology. The Banker’s goal has been to highlight those vendors, large and small, who have made a real contribution to advancing shareholder value and customer service within financial institutions over the past 12 months. The Banker is part of the Financial Times Business Group.

Judges for The Banker Technology Awards represent a cross section of financial technology expertise. They include: Chris Skinner, independent consultant, Balatro Ltd., research director, Shaping Tomorrow; John Stone, MD TowerGroup Advisory Services EMEA; Russell Simm director of technology and process design, Alliance & Leicester; John Brosky. MD EFMA (European Financial Management and Marketing Association); Bob Fuller, information technology director, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein; and P.J. DiGiammarino, director of information technology, Barclays Capital.

17/05/2004

Tullett Financial, a leading provider of real-time money markets, interest rate derivatives and fixed income price information from the inter-dealer market, today announced that it has launched a service which offers customers direct Internet access to Tullett Financial’s premium data products; SwapMarker, MortgageMarker and TreasuryMarker.

The data can be viewed in two ways. The first is a light application, downloaded by the client, which enables the delivery of Tullett Financial’s information products via the Internet direct to user workstations. Once installed, the application consists of the Tullett PageViewer enabling a user to view data within Tullett Financial-designed intuitive page displays. Blocks of data and their underlying records can then be highlighted, dragged, and dropped into Microsoft Excel spreadsheets for manipulation and in-depth analysis. The underlying records within the spreadsheet continuously update in real-time. The application also has an Excel add-in for enhanced functionality which allows the user to set up chains, tables and pages directly from within Excel. All data viewed in Excel is “pushed” in a real-time event driven manner and displayed in an efficient “array” form to minimise workstation CPU load.

For organisations that simply want to view the pages from SwapMarker, MortgageMarker or TreasuryMarker without accessing the underlying records, a second method of access is available via http://www.tullettfinancial.comthrough a user’s web browser. This method provides the ability to launch floating windows for more efficient use of the desktop.

The technology underlying both services is the CityVision StarNet product from real-time market data applications specialist, Arcontech.

Commenting on the launch of the new Internet delivered services, David Mukerji, Director and Global Head of Sales for Tullett Financial said, “We are already seeing significant interest in this new delivery channel from our customers. It has proved of particular interest to users within large customer sites and smaller firms who do not have access to or require the breadth of content provided by traditional vendor terminals, but who do require a broad spectrum of fixed income, interest rate derivatives and money markets information at a cost effective price point. Furthermore, the ability to consume our information within spreadsheets over the Internet, in addition to viewing the page displays, provides these customers with a level of functionality and utility hitherto only available via vendor terminals.”

16/03/2004

London: Arcontech, the London-based real-time market data applications and middleware specialist is celebrating 25 years of continued business success.

Arcontech started developing custom solutions for financial institutions in 1979 and has since become one of the leading experts in real-time processing and messaging. Clients range from major investment banks and National Treasury through to on-line trading firms.

“It is particularly satisfying to have reached this milestone, maturing through the difficult market conditions of the past two years, ready for strong growth as the industry recovers,” said Andrew Miller, chief executive of Arcontech.

In recent years, Arcontech technology has been behind the rapid expansion in the internet-based spread betting markets. Implementation of an Arcontech service allowed leading financial spread-betting specialist City Index to quadruple its business in one year. City Index was subsequently voted best spread betting firm and CFD provider in 2002 and 2003 by Investors Chronicle magazine.

Through constant investment in leading edge technology, Arcontech has stayed at the forefront of developments in the field. “Financial sector users are among the most demanding and are constantly seeking to gain and retain a competitive edge through IT,” said Miller. “It’s been a busy twelve months, with significant change in the market. We’ve seen solid evidence, in terms of sales, that our product development and strategic alliances reflect growing customer demand for our technology.”

In January this year Tullett Financial Information selected Arcontech to provide a global distribution system – which will initially be implemented in London and New York – to bolster their direct offerings of market data to customers.

In August 2003, Arcontech signed a deal to work with Radianz to deliver their products and services over the Radianz network, offering a combined market data package that will allow institutions to share their data directly, avoiding the costs and inefficiencies of traditional vendors such as Bloomberg and MoneyLine Telerate.

In November 2003 Arcontech launched Excelerator 2, which allows users to exchange real-time data between Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and to include multiple sources, including vendor feeds. It works over StarNet, so can be a strategic component connecting producers and consumers of real-time market data globally.

In December 2003 a strategic marketing and technology alliance was announced with Cicada, a global provider of data validation and cleansing services.

“There have been incredible changes in the industry over the last 25 years” says Miller “and the pace of change continues to increase. Our clients have come to rely on Arcontech to continue to develop and support the most competitive solutions in a demanding market.”

24/02/2004

The latest bi-annual PIPs survey by Knowledge Technology Solutions PLC (KTS) reveals that in the last six months, the leading provider of regulatory news distribution – the London Stock Exchange’s Regulatory News Service (RNS) – has continued to lose market share to competitor Primary Information Providers (PIPs). The percentage of regulatory news announcements distributed by RNS fell by almost 5% (4.65%) to 73.78% over the period. This is the first time that RNS’s market share has fallen below 75%.

Since the market was opened up to competition in April 2002, KTS’s surveys have shown that the rival PIPs have slowly but steadily eaten into RNS’s market share. Of the 87,674 regulatory news announcements made in the last six months, a greater proportion than ever, (22,987), were distributed by the five competing services.

The data was sourced from KTS’s UK live financial news and data service, QuoteTerminal, which aggregates all the PIPs announcements sent to the London Stock Exchange.

BusinessWire, the third largest PIP by volume of announcements distributed, experienced the greatest increase in market share, +2.24% to 8.56%, with PR Newswire, the second biggest PIP, adding 1.90% to its share to reach 11.12%. PIMS, despite only holding marginal market share, also grew by 0.03% to 0.39%. Hugin was the only PIP to experience a small decrease. Its market share fell from 0.58% to 0.56%. NewslinkÕs service remains suspended as of June 2003.

The main development since the last survey has been the overhaul of Waymaker’s price plan. Waymaker, which has 5.59% of the PIPs market, now claims to be market leader on price. It has reduced its charges for news and results announcements from £50 to £10 and has also capped its annual charge at £1,000, the lowest of all the services. Consequently, it gained 0.86% of the market over the last six months.

Dr Marc Pinter-Krainer, Chief Executive of KTS, said:

“The enduring dominance of RNS demonstrates that its established reputation and high quality service obviously still count. However, it’s not surprising that RNS’s market share is continuing to fall. With Waymaker reducing its charges by £40 per announcement, it will be interesting to see if any of the other services follow suit and introduce price incentives in an attempt to grab more of the market from RNS”

26/01/2004

Tullett Financial Information, a major provider of money markets, interest rate derivatives and fixed income data from the inter-dealer market, has selected Arcontech, the London-based real-time market data applications and middleware specialist to provide a global distribution system to bolster their direct offerings of market data to customers.

Initially, StarNet will be implemented in London and New York. This will provide increased regional capacity and resilience. Very aggressive timescales have been set for the project – the system is expected to go live early in 2004 against a contract agreed late in November 2003.

Tullett Financial’s customers will be able to choose from and combine several delivery mechanisms:

A web-based implementation will use Arcontech’s “CityVision JClients” Java displays to provide simple access to Tullett Financial’s optional services such as SwapMarker and MortgageMarker.

The web sites will also distribute a package including Arcontech’s CityVision Excelerator, enabling Excel users to access Tullett Financial’s information services directly within spreadsheets, via leased line, RadianzNet or the Public Internet.

The solution includes an innovative page-viewing applet, which allows Tullett Financial’s customers to highlight blocks of data from pages and drag and drop them into Excel. A special add-in developed by Arcontech for Tullett Financial then populates Excel with the underlying record and field definitions and updates them in real-time.

CityVision components will also allow Tullett Financial’s institutional clients and web vendor redistributors to integrate both pages and logical records easily within a multitude of possible web product offerings or corporate intranet solutions.

A specially developed StarNet handler for Tullett Financial’s SURF data feed receives information in page and logical record form and distributes to end-users via Arcontech’s CityVision StarNet middleware.

David Mukerji, director & global head of sales for Tullett Financial says, “It was clear that Arcontech had the underlying components we needed to build the distribution system we specified and a skilled and responsive development team to address our requirements. We’re looking forward to a significant take-up of our products distributed via this technology when the services are launched early this year.”

Andrew Miller, CEO of Arcontech says, “We are very excited about this deployment – it’s StarNet end-to-end and a huge endorsement of our technology as a global real-time messaging platform by yet another major player.”

Under the terms of the deal, Arcontech will also provide assistance, where required, for institutional and vendor clients of Tullett Financial who wish to incorporate the company’s data into their own web pages or intranets. However, according to Miller, the use of CityVision components removes much of the hard work and simplifies greatly the integration task for web support staff.

Miller again: “We have designed our components with the capacity for rapid development in mind and we anticipate significant interest from others in the ground-breaking approach we have taken.”

17/12/2003

Arcontech, a leading provider of end-user market data technology and real-time middleware has announced a strategic marketing and technology alliance formed with Cicada, a global provider of data validation and cleansing services.

The agreement means that the companies will work together to tender for major business where their products are complementary and their combined strengths make a compelling offering. The companies have already begun work on a number of contract bids.

The alliance brings together the strength and reputation of Cicada’s data quality management technologies with Arcontech’s acknowledged expertise and products for real-time data contributions, distribution and desktop data integration.

Cicada’s technology is built on its well established Composer product, which provides a central platform for data acquisition, validation, cleansing and integration. Based on this the company has developed a range of award-winning business solutions across the financial sector.

Arcontech will supply products from its CityVision range. In particular, its newly released Excel integration components for real-time data submission and distribution, its StarNet global market data internetworking system and its server components for Reuters RMDS integration are proving to be of considerable interest.

Andrew Miller, chief executive of Arcontech says: “We’ve been looking for a credible partner in this space for a while, and Cicada is ideal – we have minimal competitive overlap, yet operate in exactly the same market space. I’m delighted to be working with them.”

“The combined strengths of Arcontech’s product range and Cicada’s technology and services present exciting advantages and choices for those organisations seeking solutions in the real-time space,” said James Redfern, Manager, Strategic Alliances & Partnerships at Cicada. “We’re looking forward to working with Arcontech in a successful alliance and providing our mutual clients with innovative solutions, suited to their specific needs.”

A further advantage of the alliance is that prospective clients can expect lower risk and faster implementation as deliveries will be based on proven product, each supplier providing components from their ‘best of breed’ suites.

26/11/2003

Automatic updating of real-time and other data into Microsoft Excel spreadsheets has been simplified with the release of an updated software bundle from Arcontech, the London based developer of real-time data distribution and display systems.

The new combined product, Excelerator 2, allows users to take real-time data from multiple sources into a single spreadsheet or workbook and to cross-reference the data using source-independent symbology. It is capable of combining record and page-based data, for instance in looking up London Stock Exchange SEAQ Level II data using the underlying exchange symbology.

Excelerator 2 is installed as an Excel add-in, with its own menu and toolbar, removing the need for additional applications on the PC. Like other Arcontech products, it works over StarNet, which can be used over financial networks such as RadianzNet to create data sub networks connecting producers and consumers of real-time market data.

Excelerator and CityVision Excel Contributor (CVEC) are the two existing products Arcontech has packaged to make this single software suite. Excelerator pumps real-time data from information sources directly into Excel spreadsheets for manipulation by users, while CVEC is used to publish data in real-time from spreadsheets effectively enabling any user to become a data source. Both can be used over LANs. Intranets, Extranets and the public Internet.

“Combining the two products means that using only Excel, people will be able to submit and retrieve real-time data from multiple sources in a controlled and secure environment,” says Andrew Miller, managing director of Arcontech. “Any business sector where there is a need to communicate data in real-time or make automatic calculations based on frequently changing data will be able to take advantage of the ease-of-use of this approach.”

Current users of Arcontech Excel products include Abbey National Treasury Services, Her Majesty’s Treasury Debt Management Office, Sporting Index and City Index (part of the ICAP group).

Application Development Manager for the UK Debt Management Office, Andrew Wasielewski says “CVEC enabled us to set up a real-time gilt price benchmark page on multiple data services, and allows business users to perform maintenance whenever required, without involving us in a lengthy software development and upgrade cycle. It combines the strengths of the CityVision API with the speed and flexibility of Excel.”

An announcement is expected soon concerning a major strategic implementation of Excelerator2.

22/08/2003

The latest PIPs survey by Knowledge Technology Solutions PLC reveals that the leading provider of regulatory news distribution Ð the London Stock Exchange’s Regulatory News Service (RNS) – lost 6.52% of its market share to rival primary information providers (PIPs) over the last six months. Since the market was opened to competition in April 2002, there has been fierce competition and price-discounting as the various PIPs jockey for position.

The source of KTS’s data is its UK live financial news and data product, QuoteTerminal, which aggregates all the PIPs announcements.

The other major development was the decision by Newslink, which claims to be the UK’s largest independent news aggregation and delivery service, to suspend its regulatory news service at the end of June.

The main beneficiary of RNS’s loss was BusinessWire Ð its market share rose from 1.53% to 6.32% in the past six months. As a result BusinessWire overtook Waymaker as the PIP with the third largest share of the market. The other PIPs increasing their market share were Waymaker, which jumped from 2.80% to 4.73% and Hugin, which rose from 0.42% to 0.58%.

PR Newswire suffered a very small fall (0.08%) in its share of the market, but still retains second place having issued 9.22% of regulatory announcements during the previous six months. PIMS’s share of the market also fell by 0.23% to 0.36%.

Dr Marc Pinter-Krainer, chief executive of KTS, said:

Ã’The regulatory news market was opened up to competitors some sixteen months ago now, so some might say that it’s about time that the new players began to grab a decent slice of the market. However, RNS is a well-known, trusted name and in my opinion it was almost inevitable that it would hold on to most of the market while its competitors tried to make a name for themselves. I also believe that, despite the progress the new PIPs are now making, it will be a long time, if ever, before RNS finds itself being challenged as market-leader.

04/08/2003

Real-time market data specialist Arcontech is to offer its products and services over the Radianz network as part of a combined market data package that will allow institutions to create shared networks of data that bypass information vendors such as Reuters, Bloomberg and MoneyLine Telerate.

Under this new initiative Arcontech’s CityVision StarNet software will be used over RadianzNet to create data sub networks connecting producers and consumers of real-time market data.

Myron Tataryn, Head of European Sales, Radianz, commented, “Whilst Radianz remains neutral concerning the services and suppliers we support, clearly it makes sense to work with companies whose products add value to our own offerings. Arcontech has some interesting technology in its CityVision StarNet range that fit well with our model. The combination allows for rapid delivery of selective real-time channels between any or all of our 9000+ customer locations – a true market data community.”

Andrew Miller, managing director of London-based Arcontech, says that there have been attempts to establish such networks before, notably for replacement of vendors’ closed-user groups using the Internet. “The beauty of this deal is that is removes the key obstacle that has hampered deployment in the past – the lack of reliable, high-performance bandwidth,” he says. “Although StarNet works well over the public Internet, there’s not much in the way of service level guarantees available out there.”

Arcontech will offer three related services over RadianzNet: The first is a hosted market data contributions infrastructure, through which banks can send data for onward distribution to their chosen vendors. The required information can also be sourced directly from their internal market data distribution systems such as Reuters’ TIB, Triarch or RMDS systems. In either case the comms and infrastructure management is outsourced to Radianz, while system management can be retained or passed to Arcontech.

The second model provides a direct distribution channel from firms such as exchanges, interdealer brokers and specialist data providers to their clients and end users. This may be to add value to their service offering or to turn their market data into a profit centre rather than a cost centre. StarNet has flexible interfaces to allow end-users to retrieve the data, such as Arcontech’s TraderStation market data terminal and Excelerator Excel data pump, its interfaces to RMDS and via CityVision APIs available in ActiveX, COM and Java.

Thirdly, the technology allows the establishment of market data communities that can share data, disintermediating the traditional information providers. Any number of nodes at any number of banks can be interconnected, with each source acting as its own data centre or contributing to a central hub. Firms will be able to have direct control over who accesses their data, allowing them to develop revenue streams or create cooperative ventures.

07/07/2003

Implementation of an on-line service has allowed leading financial spread-betting specialist City Index to quadruple its business over the past year.

Developed by London based financial systems specialist Arcontech for City Index, who’s parent company is the world’s largest derivates broker ICAP, the web service allows clients to speculate on a full range of financial instruments and indices, monitor their positions and manage their accounts over the Internet using real-time prices.

“The system allows us to provide continually evolving functionality to our clients while supporting an increasing volume of trades,” said Frances Sharpe, chief technology officer at City Index. “A major factor in our success is the reliability of the system, which has coped with volatile markets producing significant increases in volume on some days. Clients have recognised this and know that they have a reliable service, which has been a major factor in the growth of the business.”

Prior to the introduction of the web service – http://www.cityindex.co.uk- clients could only place bets over the phone. Using the web, they can see the same real-time prices as City Index’s trading team. The software also allows them to view their account details, make trades and examine their trading history, and review their open positions using real-time updates.

“The Arcontech software is also used in support of our internal data operations and calculation engines, which are an essential part of the business,” Sharpe said. City Index has deployed the Arcontech CityVision on-line trading system, market data distribution system and contribution engine. This allows it to publish its calculated prices to the web at the same time as to its internal systems. Arcontech’s open interfaces eased integration with existing systems and allowed rapid development of efficient value added processing.

Importantly, the system has allowed the volume of business to grow much faster than the growth in the number of dealers that the company employs. “We are able to support more clients per dealer as a result of switching from the phone to the Internet,” said Sharpe.

“Reliability, speed and accuracy are critical issues in real-time dealing systems, so it is particularly gratifying that these features of CityVision have again been proven at City Index.” said Andrew Miller, managing director of Arcontech. “It has also been rewarding and exciting to be so directly involved in the success of the City Index business, making sure our products and custom developments keep pace with their innovative requirements.”