Eikos Partners Framework Enables Rapid Delivery of Next Generation Applications

Eikos Launches New WordPress powered Website

Eikos launches its new website now powered by wordpress, making it easier to add content that immediately integrates into the great look and feel that we have applied to our website, we are continuing to work on providing further integration with WordPress so that we can integrate with social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter.

If anyone is interested in the Windows 8 Metro inspired theme we have applied to WordPress for our site, then please feel free to contact us at info@eikospartners.com.

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Numerix & Eikos Partner to Offer “Numerix Powered” Solutions for epCatalyst Platform Users

Partnership to provide Eikos clients with interactive access to Numerix CrossAsset pricing analytics and risk management capabilities within Eikos’ epCatalyst platform dashboard

NEW YORK – FEBRUARY 23, 2011 – Numerix (www.numerix.com) the leading provider of cross-asset analytics for derivatives valuations and risk management, along with Eikos Partners (www.eikospartners.com), a specialist in trading and risk applications for the financial industry, today announced their partnership to offer integrated access to “Numerix Powered” interactive pricing, analytics and risk display solutions within the Eikos epCatalyst platform dashboard which is available now.

Users of the Eikos epCatalyst platform dashboard, based on the powerful and flexible Microsoft Silverlight technology, which includes portfolio managers, traders and risk managers, will be able to access the extensive Numerix CrossAsset library of independent pricing models and methods to price and generate risk sensitivities across all asset classes. The flexibility of the Numerix CrossAsset library coupled with the rapid development capabilities of epCatalyst, will allow developers to tie into the Numerix pricing and risk environments to create robust solutions. Eikos epCatalyst enables front and middle office professionals to do deal structuring and trade entry on the fly, as well as calculate pricing-risk analytics and drill down on the aspects of virtually any Numerix defined or structured deal via a high impact GUI dashboard and series of interactive display gadgets.

“The tight integration of Numerix analytics within the Eikos epCatalyst platform offers users a powerful and robust pricing and risk solution. The wide variety of display solutions and available models means users can now value virtually any deal type using Numerix’s different methodologies and custom model calibrations. We look forward to a successful partnership with Eikos and to providing our customers with new and exciting ways to access and display our world class analytics,” said Steven R. O’Hanlon, President and COO of Numerix.

“We developed epCatalyst to create a highly flexible environment with a superior user experience, which enables users to be able to visualize and interact with the complexities of the information and services supporting their business, states David Lattimore-Gay,” Partner, Eikos. “The combination of epCatalyst and Numerix’s industry leading analytics services, brings this concept to an entirely new level, and allows our clients to create and view any pricing model and complex risk scenario using an intuitive interface in a few minutes across a diverse set of source systems.”

The epCatalyst framework coupled with Numerix’s pricing and risk management capabilities provides users with a stable platform, with all the display, communication, data, process management and integration tools needed to build sophisticated risk management applications that are essential for the financial industry.

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Eikos Partners Announces epCatalyst for the Financial Services Market

Eikos Framework Enables Fast Start, Rapid Delivery of Microsoft Silverlight Applications for the Financial Industry

NEW YORK – JULY 13, 2010 – Eikos Partners (www.eikospartners.com) a specialist in designing and developing Silverlight applications for the financial industry, today announced EPCATALYST, a rapid development platform created to deliver sophisticated Microsoft Silverlight-based applications.

The major EPCATALYST framework component manages the Silverlight display objects, or “widgets.” Within the display framework, the EPCATALYST widgets take on the overall theme, and perform direct business functions. Using the services of the display platform, widgets can interact with services in other parts of EPCATALYST, or with each other to create an intuitive response to user interactions. For customization purposes, Eikos Partners designed the EPCATALYST with many generic widgets.

“Our goal was to reduce the time, costs and risks of building new Silverlight solutions, or adding them to an existing systems infrastructure” said David Lattimore-Gay, Senior Partner, Eikos Partners. “EPCATALYST represents a stable platform, with all the display, communication, data, process management and integration tools needed to build sophisticated Silverlight applications that are essential for the financial industry.”

The framework also contains other key elements that financial services rely upon such as Database, CEP, Business Intelligence (BI) and Reporting & Document Management components. These are all connected by a communication layer that functions as a service bus, and provides connection over the intranet and Internet. EPCATALYST is structured to ensure technology choice remains open, and has wide ranging flexibility to add new functions and interactions. Interaction with data and services that are provided by an existing systems infrastructure or by external services are provided by web service components.

“Our experience of using EPCATALYST with our clients is that it easily saves 4-6 months in analysis and development time, and allows immediate focus on the business problem, with the opportunity to deliver real world capability within a very short period of time. Using EPCATALYST allows the focus to be on effectiveness, efficiency, differentiation and a heightened User Experience,” added Lattimore-Gay.

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Eikos Partners Creates new Portal for Cantor Fitzgerald Prime Services Division

NEW YORK – May 6, 2010 - Eikos Partners (www.eikospartners.com), a specialist in designing and developing Silverlight applications for the financial industry, today announced it has delivered a complete business portal for Cantor Fitzgerald’s Prime Services Division.

Cantor provides equity and fixed income Prime Brokerage services to hedge funds, money managers, REIT’s, professional traders, broker dealers and ‘40 Act funds.

“We are delighted with the portal delivered by Eikos,” said Noel Kimmel, Senior Managing Director in charge of Cantor Prime Services. “The portal enables us to integrate all asset classes into a single environment, and is designed to enhance the client experience.”

The portal was designed and developed in order to provide clients access to full-featured reports, trade capture services and various portfolio accounting data across all asset class. It exposes a set of services being provided by Cantor Prime Services, and is built in Microsoft Silverlight 3.0. Eikos was selected because of their experience with Silverlight, and their process, which allowed for early and continuous delivery of capability.

“This is the culmination of 18 months of work in understanding how to build Silverlight applications and deploy them for mission critical business needs” said David Lattimore-Gay, Partner, Eikos. “We have built a reference infrastructure to support our best practices, and most importantly have a team in place that can quickly turn concept into reality.”

The layered structure that Eikos employed allows for marshalling and integration of data and services from the back-end, linked to an extendable front-end that contains visual elements, or “UI widgets”, that perform the business functions. The UI widgets communicate with each other to create an intuitive feedback to the user, and the user has control of how they are organized and displayed. Eikos’s Creative Design Team worked closely with Cantor to design a rich user interface that balanced form and functionality resulting in a superior user experience.

The capabilities offered by Silverlight to deliver Rich Internet Applications (RIA), with a zero touch install, to a wide array of browsers and OS platforms were proven in a mission critical environment, so that both Mac and Windows users can access the portal.

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Eikos Partners Wins Innovator Award From Windows in Financial Services for Silverlight Integration

NEW YORK – June 23 2009 – Eikos Partners (www.eikospartners.com) a leading innovative business consulting and project-based technology services to large investment banks, hedge funds and asset management organizations, was chosen by Windows in Financial Services, “The Source on Microsoft Technologies for Financial Services,” to receive a 2009 WFS Innovator Award. The ceremony will be held at SIFMA’s Technology Management Conference and Exhibit in Microsoft Corp’s suite at the New York Hilton. Eikos Partners was selected for its development of financial applications for trading on Microsoft Silverlight.

Criteria for judging and selecting were based on the end result enabling a concrete resolution to an impending issue, solving practical business problems. Winners were selected for clearly implementing technologies on the Microsoft software platform that will redefine a new tomorrow in technology and demonstrate a clear-cut advantage in their particular sectors of the marketplace.

Eikos Partners was recognized for developing a zero-touch equity trading system running on Microsoft Silverlight with tick-by-tick position, P&L and sophisticated stock charting that allows users to annotate charts with news and even online chat sessions. The charts update in real-time, and the news and annotations made by users appear on the charts immediately. In addition, moving a mouse over a stock instantly brings up a choice of buy and sell actions, allowing users to make trades in a single click. The system culminates a year of work by Eikos Partners in studying different possibilities for Silverlight. The system also uses Enterprise Gateway from Kaazing to push real-time updates to the client, and Microsoft Azure for back-end processing.

“Silverlight is emerging as one of the most scalable and flexible visualization platforms for the financial arena, and Eikos Partners has been one of the pioneers in program development and customizing solutions,” said Craig Saint-Amour, U.S. capital markets industry solutions director, Microsoft Corp. “Its award winning technology reflects the key elements that are important to financial organizations: ease of use, rapid updates, and ability to process and share data in a customized environment.”

“We’re honored to be recognized by Windows in Financial Services,” said David Lattimore-Gay, Senior Partner, Eikos Partners. “Our approach redefines how real-time applications will be built, and raises the bar dramatically on performance, speed, availability and reliability, and most importantly, the user experience. Our goal is to future-proof functionality to parallel the presumed expectations that users demand as the scope and capabilities of financial technology services grows.

“We believe that the next generation of client side applications will have to have real time data, news and transaction services as a means of competing for market presence,” added Lattimore-Gay. “Web delivery means that solutions have to be reliable and have true scalability, as well as be technically agnostic. Kaazing fully meets those needs.” “Eikos has utilized the Kaazing Enterprise Gateway for what it does best—creating an entirely new user experience that’s only possible with low-latency delivery and reliable two-way communications,” said Jonas Jacobi, CEO of Kaazing.

“Innovation at the financial sector is proving to be a challenge accosting all entities in the financial realm, especially due to an economy that has had seismic rumblings,” said Joe Viviani, publisher, Windows in Financial Services. “This year’s 2009 WFS award winners were able to capture, isolate and overcome a business issue with a solid innovation – and extended its capabilities beyond the traditional limits. Whether on a local or global scale, each of these winners has been able to seamlessly integrate their new technologies into the daily workflow DNA and as a result, save time and worry. We salute all the entries and the winners who took the time to utilize their resources through the Microsoft technology platform to find the right business answer for their distinct business needs.”

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Eikos Partners Teams With Kaazing to Deliver Cutting Edge Technology for Financial Services Organizations

NEW YORK – June 4, 2009 – Eikos Partners (www.eikospartners.com) a leading innovative business consulting and project-based technology services to large investment banks, hedge funds and asset management organizations and Kaazing Corporation, makers of real-time web acceleration technology, announced a partnership to collaborate on holistic application development, including the Microsoft Silverlight platform for financial technology customers.

The alliance of the two organizations was based on a mutual core expertise in the financial arena as well as business synergies. The collaboration will provide a comprehensive delivery solution for mission-critical, client-facing applications needing the ability to stream market data, news, chat and transaction services.

Eikos Partners recently developed a zero-touch equity trading system running on Microsoft Silverlight with tick-by-tick position, P&L and sophisticated stock charting that allows users to annotate charts with news and even online chat sessions. The charts update in real-time, and the news and annotations made by users appear on the charts immediately. In addition, moving a mouse over a stock instantly brings up a choice of buy and sell actions, allowing users to make trades in a single click. The system deploys Enterprise Gateway from Kaazing to push real-time updates to the client and Microsoft Azure for back-end processing.

“We believe that these capabilities in the next generation of client side applications will be important as a competitive benchmark for market presence,” said David Lattimore- Gay, Senior Partner, Eikos Partners. “Web delivery means that solutions have to be reliable and have true scalability, as well as be technically agnostic. Kaazing fully meets those needs and is the logical partner to take us forward. The blending of our expertise will be beneficial for our collective customer base since we both have deep level experience working with Silverlight, the next generation of application efficiency.” Part of Eikos’ solution is the Kaazing Enterprise Gateway, which speeds messages between Message Delivery Networks and real-time web clients. Applications like those built by Eikos must meet exacting performance and reliability requirements regardless of the technologies being used.

“Eikos is a recognized leader in the development of Financial Services applications,” said Jonas Jacobi, CEO of Kaazing. “We’re excited about pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with enterprise web development alongside them; we’re convinced that the applications we create together will set the standard for tomorrow’s financial service clients.”

Kaazing’s solutions, based upon their patent-pending HTML 5 WebSockets Acceleration technology, make it possible to deploy Rich Internet Applications that can handle unprecedented amounts of traffic quickly and reliably. As such, they’re the ideal partner for the high-traffic, low-latency web applications that Eikos develops.

Kaazing Enterprise Gateway, the company’s flagship product, is built to the exacting demands of industries like financial services, telecommunications, social networking and online gaming. There’s no software to deploy on the client, and a wide range of protocols, browsers, and Rich Internet Application clients are supported. “Eikos has utilized the Kaazing Enterprise Gateway for what it does best—creating an entirely new user experience that’s only possible with low-latency delivery and reliable two-way communications,” continued Jacobi. “Kaazing’s patent-pending HTML 5 WebSocket Acceleration technology helps financial services clients redefine how realtime applications will be built, and raises the bar dramatically on delivery speed, message volume and dependability.”

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Worldflow and Eikos Partners Form a Strategic Alliance

NEW YORK – May 13, 2009 – WorldFlow, a leading provider of software and consultancy services to the financial services market, and Eikos Partners, a leading innovative business consulting and project-based technology services to large investment banks, hedge funds and asset management organizations, have formed a strategic alliance to better serve their clients with innovative end-to-end solutions on both sides of the Atlantic.

Both firms have an established track record of providing solutions to Investment banks and Hedge Funds using a deep understanding of the businesses needs and innovative approaches to meet them.

Eikos Partners “right shore” model balances the strength of its highly skilled New York staff with the cost efficiency of its team of professionals based in Panama, specializing in Microsoft .Net 3.5 technologies.

Eikos has developed a set of User Experience Frameworks that takes the traditional interactive UI for trading and financial applications to a dynamic new level. EP Trader is Microsoft WPF based, and EP Trader its Silverlight solution set.

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The Facts Every Developer Needs to Know About Windows 8

Microsoft’s Build event launched their new OS, Windows 8 to the development community with much fanfare in September 2011, so what does this mean to a developer today?

1. How does it affect me as a developer?

Windows 8 Metro opens up the development environment to both Web and Desktop developers equally, so now Metro applications can be developed using either HTML/JavaScript or XAML and your favorite programming language. Included in your choice of languages is now C++. Developing apps for the new Metro interface does require the developer to learn the new WinRT abstraction layer, but this should be familiar to most developers, so no significant learning curve. Many consumer based applications are now taking greater advantage of cloud services; this is where you and I will see the biggest impact for us as developers. Building cloud-enabled applications is a relatively new skill, as well as an opportunity.

2. How does it affect my users?

This very much depends on your user base. If you are building Line of Business (LOB) applications that make extensive use of the Desktop, then users will not be affected, as they will still be spending much of their time in the Desktop UI for Windows 8. If your user base is mobile, for example Sales Reps, then they are more likely to be thinking Tablet / Phone as devices for communicating with the main office. This is where the right Metro application will really shine, as it will provide an immersive, touch-centric, experience in an “easy to carry” form factor.

3. Why should I care?

As a developer, you should be excited. The release of Windows 8 Metro offers up an opportunity to target a larger range of form factors, from Desktops to Tablets to Phones. As long as they are running Windows 8, then the same application will be able to run across all these devices. Certainly a new level of innovation can be expected as developers start to get to grips with the Metro approach to building immersive touch-centric solutions. With the introduction of the Windows Store, it will make it easy to market and potentially deliver your new cool app to some 400+ million and growing Windows devices.

4. Why and/or when should I upgrade?

As a developer, it makes sense to start looking at Windows 8 / Metro, and the related developer IDE’s as soon as possible. You will want to be ahead of the curve once the OS drops to manufacturing. Windows 8 can be run in a VM, e.g. VirtualBox and VMware, so experimentation should be started NOW.

Upgrading your development environment should wait until at least RC1. The same also applies to the Operating System. Remembering that you probably still need to maintain existing applications on Windows 7 and Visual Studio 2010, utilizing VM’s is your best bet to allow you to start developing for the next generation of apps. All of the bits from the Conference are available for download now, so there is no excuse.

5. What’s cool about Windows 8?

The coolest aspect of Windows 8 is no doubt the Metro UI. Why? Well Metro offers up a touch-centric UI that provides an immersive fluid experience on mobile devices like tablets and phones. It certainly will be an interesting challenge to design applications that run within the restricted environment that is Metro, in conjunction with the newly introduced Windows Store. The store will provide easy access to your applications for Metro users.

6. What do I need to start learning?

This depends on which side of the development line you stand. As a server-side developer, Windows Azure and Windows Live services provide the ability to sync user profile choices across many Windows 8 devices, assuming you are using the same login credentials. If you are a UI developer, Metro is the brand new sparkly UI to develop for. You will need to start learning about the new WinRT API’s that allow the developer to hook into the capabilities of the OS.

7. What provisions are there for cross platform development?

Metro is a strictly Windows 8 UI, so for cross-platform development, you need to be looking at HTML5/JavaScript support offered up by ASP.Net 4.5. This will give you the widest reach possible. But be warned, you will need to consider the device profile when extending your applications reach. You will have to consider devices with desktop-like profiles, all the way down to the mobile phone. Visualization of the data will be a key differentiator when designing applications for the furthest reach on the Web.

8. Is this the end of Silverlight?

Certainly Silverlight 5 will be released at the end of the year (2011) with a number of enhancements and cool features to make it a very compelling development environment that can be deployed to all major browsers across Windows and Mac. It also runs on Windows Phone 7, and also run as Out of Browser within the same OS’s, so the answer is a resounding no. Silverlight is alive and well.

9. Is my investment in .NET worthless now?

Whereas with XAML/C#/VB.NET/C++ we know that you will be able to develop for all these environments:

• Metro
• Silverlight
• WPF

You will also be able to develop for these devices:

• Xbox
• Windows phone
• Desktop
• Tablets

The work you’ve done with the languages and markup will allow you to consider developing on a bigger range of devices and environments.

Summary

Windows 8 spells an exciting opportunity for developers to start building Metro-style applications. They will be appealing to a whole new range of users, using many of the languages and tools they are already familiar with. In addition, it opens up the platform to web developers with their HTML and JavaScript skills, and promises them an equal footing on the Windows platform. For development team managers, they need to consider where they want to focus their primary attention: either Metro or the Desktop. They need to ensure that their teams get exposure to the appropriate skills, and begin learning the technology now. This way, they are ready to hit the ground running when the product launches.

About David Lattimore-Gay

David Lattimore–Gay has an extensive career in providing innovative technology solutions to the volatile business areas of the financial industry. He has developed a well-defined process for matching the pace of change that provides flexibility that increases ROI, and identifies and manages risk of the entire program. He currently serves as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Eikos Partners, a software consulting company based in New York.

You can reach him at david.lattimore-gay@eikospartners.com

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Delivering the new “Front” to the Front Office

The On-Demand, Cross-Asset Challenge

September 1, 2011 – Valuation and risk management of derivatives and structured products is a highly dynamic and complex process. Risk managers and front office staff managing large diverse portfolios need to be able to access the information they need, when they need it, across a wide-range of existing systems. They need to be able to view valuation changes based on current, historic and simulated market conditions, reveal where core risks lie, and take appropriate action, such as hedging or re-balancing the portfolio. But in order to be effective, this testing must be done near to the point of execution, across all asset classes, and in as near real-time as possible. Compounded by heightened regulatory pressures, this is no longer seen as a ‘nice to have’. An intuitive, on-demand interface to a single source of the truth is a key differentiator for financial services organizations on both the buy-side and sell-side.

The Solution

Numerix and Eikos Partners have partnered together to deliver a new ‘front’ to the front office. This fully customizable workstation application enables users to easily see all of the positions in a portfolio across a wide range of asset types such as: Interest Rates, CDS, Equities, Fixed Income and more. Using this intuitive browser-based interface, portfolios can be re-priced based on specific conditions or changes in market data. In the world of derivatives, many organizations could only run these calculations once a day. Now they can be done on-demand, all in a fraction of the time, thanks to integration with grid environments such as Microsoft Windows Azure. Decisions can at last be made on a near real-time basis using dynamic market conditions.

For example, users can select a portfolio of 1,000 complex FX trades, select a market environment, change it, and submit the selection for pricing and see the result all within seconds. Secure, user-based permissions enable the Back Office to use this workstation to perform End-of-Day Valuations across all portfolios based on the same underlying pricing and analytics information in Numerix.

From the same workstation, Heads of Trading Desks, Risk Management and Operations executives can also leverage PowerPivot to access historical pricing and analytics data stored in very large databases, such as Microsoft SQL Server. These detailed reports and dashboards let business users analyze what traders are doing across all markets whenever they want, wherever they want.

The Platform

This solution augments existing trade capture, lifecyle, OMS, PMS, and risk management systems. Built using epCatalyst, the intuitive interface and integration framework from Eikos Partners, it runs on top of Numerix Cross Asset Server, the industry’s most comprehensive and sophisticated pricing and analytics engine. epCatalyst is a Silverlight Application Framework built entirely with the Microsoft software stack. It allows integration of multiple systems and data sources into a comprehensive infrastructure, and enables data and services to be transformed into actionable information. The result is an equally superior experience for desktop, web or mobile users. Applications built with epCatalyst interact with Numerix CrossAsset Server to price all major asset classes, including: fixed income, inflation, credit, equity, foreign exchange and commodity instruments, as well as hybrids. Seamless integration with the underlying grid environment’s scheduler, such as Microsoft Windows Azure, enables authorized users to see the workflow of this request, which servers and how many nodes in the cluster are being utilized to price this complex portfolio.

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Reaching a new Level of User Experience with WPF and Silverlight

November 11, 2010 – Eikos Partners, an established provider of solutions to the financial community, has taken the capabilities provided by Microsoft in its .Net environment to create a new kind of user interaction that takes the user experience to a new level. Success, in the competitive market for client access, is often defined by the level of the user experience; applications delivered only a short time ago already appear dated. Efficiency of the use of internal applications can be improved by an intuitive and easy to interact with interface.

In the past, such was the strength of linkage between the UI and the business logic, that a change to improve the user experience required significant surgery to the application or its complete replacement and involved significant expenditure.

Apart from the need to have a means to constantly improve the look and feel of an application without major re-writes or replacement, in parts of the market there is a need to be able to provide the client or user with their own customized UI. An example is in the Hedge Fund Services space where every Hedge Fund would like to have a customized UI, requiring hard-coded display and business logic.

Eikos Partners have created a platform to achieve a dramatic improvement in how user facing applications are built, and the experience that a user gets, by taking full advantage of the capability of WPF to separate the development of the UI from the need to have detailed understanding of the business function. This allows UI designers and developers to focus on developing new UI solutions while another set of developers focuses on the business logic. This decoupling allows change to happen faster as well as providing a cost effective solution to the need for tailored individual solutions. Eikos Partners uses SOA services; techniques and best practices to further enhance the separation between designer and developer.

The EP Trading Application UI Framework is a set of display components, built using WPF that reflect the common requirements of trading applications. There was no linkage between the designer involved with the UI and the developers of the business logic, in fact they were in differing locations, using a human ergonomics graphic designer in New York, and our team of highly qualified developers in Panama.

Eikos Partners is active in extending the framework to cover a wider set of classes and functions, and is adding display methods that change the user experience dynamics, such as display cubes. Key design elements are creation of an easily customized intuitive environment, and the ability to be able to interact with significant amounts of information without visual clutter. Eikos Partners is taking advantage of Silverlight to create the same capabilities, and a feature rich user experience, delivered over the web to the browser.

The framework is designed to meet both the needs of building new applications, as well as “re-skinning” current applications. Microsoft’s .Net environment is flexible and allows it to operate easily with other technologies, allowing new development using the optimal technology infrastructure, as well as legacy applications to benefit from dynamic improvements in the user experience. Eikos Partners has the skills to help you architect solutions to gain the benefits of the SOA approach, as well as apply its expertise to your needs for a dynamic improvement in how users interact with your solutions. Go to www.eikospartners.com to see a demonstration, or call us on 212 572 6480 so we can discuss your needs.

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Microsoft Jockeys for Position in the Clouds

APRIL 10, 2009 – Cloud computing provides some good news for financial services companies focused on emerging from the current economic downturn with a competitive edge: no longer are huge investments needed for those huge computing resources needed to get closer to the customer. Indeed, it is not expected to be long before a substantial portion of companies in the sector will be running some version of cloud computing. To find out more about the technology and how financial services institutions can benefit, Windows in Financial Services turned to Eikos Partners’ David Lattimore-Gay.

WFS: Let’s start first with a simple explanation of cloud computing.

DLG: If you are already familiar with Software as a Service then cloud computing is the infrastructure that makes this possible. Your applications and data now reside on the Web, with no need for software to be installed on your computing device of choice. The advantage with this approach is that your applications and data are independent of your physical device. If the device is damaged, destroyed, or stolen, you lose nothing as all of your information resides in the cloud.

WFS: It is on your list of industry changing technologies. Explain.

DLG: Huge computing resources are now available to anyone, not just the select few who can afford to build out large-scale data centers and all the support services that go with them. Essentially cloud computing has commoditized what is otherwise a complex, and costly, environment. This lowers the bar, allowing increased competition and opens up the door to new application innovations. Ultimately, given the flexibility the cloud offers with regard to resource utilization, for example, you pay only for what you use, I think we’ll see a wide ranging adoption as companies embrace the power of the cloud.

WFS: How mature would you say it is?

DLG: There are now a number of offerings within this space with varying degrees of maturity: Amazon EC2, Google Apps and now Windows Azure to name just a few. Given the choice that is now available, the clouds will quickly mature as they vie for market share. We certainly will go through growing pains with pricing models and cloud stability issues, but that’s to be expected as we really are at the initial point of mass utilization of these clouds.

WFS: Microsoft has entered this space with Windows Azure. Where do you see the company being successful? Do you see their business model changing?

DLG: Windows Azure has made it fairly simple to build applications that can utilize the cloud by allowing developers to leverage their existing .NET skills. They also are providing developers with free access to Windows Azure and related services during the initial Community Technology Preview (CTP), which will allow developers to familiarize themselves with the offering. Success will be measured by the speed and number of applications that will become available for use, as well as the revenue generated from these applications. Microsoft should continue to mature the

Windows Azure offering and keep up with the demand for additional features. Microsoft has yet to announce its pricing model, but it has assured us that it will be competitively priced. Assuming it is, I think we will see a huge increase in the number of Windows Azure deployments. I don’t think that this is a change in business model, however. I do see this as a continuation of Microsoft’s goal to be the OS of choice. We have Windows Mobile, Windows Vista/ Windows 7, Windows 2008 Server, and now we have Windows Azure, the OS for the Web, so Microsoft now has it covered.

WFS: Do the large financial services providers stand to benefit from cloud computing?

DLG: There are a number of issues that need to be addressed – regulations and security immediately spring to mind – but, in general, I think yes. How fast they can benefit from cloud computing will vary depending on the types of services they offer. Those that have already taken the Web 2.0 and Software as a Service plunge will probably benefit much more quickly than those that have yet to move in that direction, as they have already made the significant investment in retooling as well as figuring out the thought processes needed to best take advantage of utility / cloud computing.

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Silverlight: The Browser as the New Desktop

December 11, 2008 – Microsoft Silverlight has been generating excitement with its release of 2.0, which Microsoft calls one of the most comprehensive solutions for the creation and delivery of applications and media experiences through a Web browser. About one in four machines worldwide now has Silverlight installed, and some four million developers have already upgraded to the new version. For financial services institutions, this new release means essentially that they are one step closer to being able to put desktop performance and flexibility on the Web. To find out how financial services institutions can best tap Silverlight’s benefits, Windows in Financial Services turned to Eikos Partners’ David Lattimore-Gay.

WFS: Explain why Silverlight is such a big deal.

DLG: Silverlight provides a rich development environment, in which developers can use their existing skills acquired while developing desktop applications, and utilize them to build out RIA applications.

WFS: What are some of the top benefits of Silverlight for financial services institutions?

DLG: It enables financial services institutions to leverage an existing pool of developer talent that already know C#, WPF, WCF, and LINQ. It provides for a much shorter learning curve to go from that environment to Silverlight. Skills as well remain localized to one or two languages, rather than spread across multiple languages and environments. In addition, there are huge cost savings that can be achieved given that Silverlight is based on the same core technologies as WPF, and is familiar to .NET developers.

WFS: Banks still are using the Internet for utility purposes rather than using it to sell new products. What guidance can you give as to the right approach to upgrading banks’ online presence?

DLG: Banks should choose a technology stack that allows for rapid evolution of the online experience as well as leverages the existing C# development pool. Selecting Silverlight as the technology would provide a great backbone to a bank’s online presence.

WFS: Is there a wrong approach?

DLG: Allowing the splintering of your technology choices adds a maintenance and support burden. It also dilutes the IT staff’s knowledgebase, which adds to costs.

WFS: Companies are reassessing their IT investments in an effort to dramatically cut costs. At the same time they are facing high expectations from sophisticated, Web savvy customers. How do you advise striking that balance?

DLG: Review the technology utilized within the company, and then consolidate down to a few key choices, perhaps ASP.Net and Silverlight for Web development, WPF for desktop applications, and .NET for back-end services. This allows for your development staff to focus on a single technology stack. This also makes it much easier for staff to move between projects. In addition, it keeps head count down, and it reduces maintenance and support costs while improving developers’ knowledge of the technology.

WFS: Where do you think we will be 18 months from now?

DLG: Silverlight will be as pervasive as Flash is today. It also will have gone through one, possibly two iterations. Functionally, Silverlight and WPF will have merged closer together, perhaps even become a single environment. This will make it possible to build in either and deploy in the other. Silverlight applications also will no longer be a prisoner of the browser. It will run from the desktop, like a traditional application, with all of the hooks to allow for updates to be pulled and deployed automatically to the environment. Deeper integration with technologies like WCF, elements that we take for guaranteed in WPF, will be available in Silverlight, i.e., the Visual Brush. The demand for more and more applications to be run from the Web, verses needing to be installed on the desktop, will increase and Silverlight will have stepped up to the demand, offering a seamless user experience.

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Tapping the Next Generation of Mobile Devices

November 1, 2008 – Wall Street professionals are starting to increase productivity by having critical information at their fingertips wherever they are and mobile devices that perform more like laptops than cell phones. Much has happened over the last few years: hardware and screens have improved, and operating systems are more equipped for financial application delivery. To find out more about the next generation of mobile devices, we spoke to Eikos Partners’ David Lattimore-Gay (DLG) to get his perspective on these tools and how firms should best mobilize their business.

WFS: Financial services firms are increasingly looking at mobility for their business needs. What does the environment look like now as far as next-generation devices available and ease-of-use regarding line-of-business applications?

DLG: Mobile devices have experienced an increase in screen size and screen fidelity, a boost in computing power, and an improved user interface. With a generation of mobile users living their lives on their mobile devices, we have a platform that will enable the next generation of apps that are geared toward these smaller devices. The biggest challenge now really comes down to the user interface, and how to cram more information into a small screen and provide intuitive navigation.

WFS: Information security is the top concern for financial institutions. How would you characterize the state of security today?

DLG: Mobile devices now have Web browsers that allow the same functionality as a full desktop browser. Sites that are secured with SSL are as secure on a mobile device as they are on a desktop. My concerns are less to do with electronic security and more to do with the security of the physical device itself. I would like to see additional security features that lock a device down and grant the valid user access, i.e. biometric devices, thumb scanners, etc. These are almost common place now on Laptop’s and UPC’s, but I have yet to see them on a phone.

WFS: What are some of the common implementation mistakes that you see?

DLG: Probably the most common mistake is trying to deliver too much functionality in the first release of a solution. It is far more effective to deliver small incremental enhancements on a basic day-one implementation. This speeds time-to-market, along with providing the agility to change the system to better support the business users.

WFS: The most difficult puzzle to solve for financial institutions is the business model. What do you advise financial firms in their approach to mobilizing their enterprise creating that critical link between business and IT?

DLG: Go back to basics, look at what makes sense to mobilize, look at the user base within the firm and determine if going mobile adds value. Collaboration is needed between the business and IT to ensure that the technology delivers on the needs for the business. This is the same for any opportunity: just because it’s there does not mean you need to take advantage of it. For retail banking, for example, it is a no-brainer that they need to go mobile, but some internal administrative functions, on the other hand, should remain bound within the confines of the business and not find their way onto your phone of choice.

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For Hedge Funds, WPF Delivers Agility

December 1, 2007 – Eikos Partners is a strategic IT consulting firm whose partners, Michael DeSanti, Brian Slater and David Lattimore-Gay, have held significant roles in large financial firms as well as in the consulting industry. With a focus on the financial industry, and in particular on capital markets, the firm seeks to help firms improve the return on their IT investments and strengthen the link between business needs and IT. We spoke with David Lattimore-Gay about some of the work that Eikos Partners has done with hedge fund clients, and his observations on how Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) has helped improve the speed with which hedge funds can shift and modify data views in order to maintain a “proprietary edge” in the marketplace.

“Hedge funds have a significantly different profile from investment banks – they must keep pace with a rapidly changing market and don’t have the luxury of spending years building enterprise-wide infrastructures,” Lattimore-Gay says about the fast-paced world of hedge funds.

To get out of the gate quickly, these firms often rely on the Microsoft Office suite, with Excel, Access and Word prevalent for most day-to-day functions and Microsoft technologies, such as SQL Server, popular for their easy integration with the Office suite of products so widely in use.

But there is another Microsoft technology that has increasingly been delivering ease, flexibility and agility to hedge funds as they continually seek to sharpen and fine-tune their views of the market, and that is Windows Presentation Foundation or WPF.

“You have credit analysts, portfolio managers, traders, and operations guys who have traditionally had their own applications they use to get work done,” Lattimore-Gay explains. “To gain a cutting edge or proprietary edge in the marketplace, each of these different groups have increasingly been talking to each other and leveraging each other’s data

Eikos Partners has worked with several firms in the construction of portals of sorts, that allow data from these varied applications to be accessed and integrated more readily by varied groups of users on the front end. Where WPF comes in, is that it provides more of a decoupling between the business functionality and the user interface than other alternatives. As a result, once Eikos Partners creates a portal structure to make data from varied applications widely available to the front end, a designer can easily access that data, and create charts, graphs and new views for displaying and drilling down into that information very quickly.

“You could argue that you can do that with ASP.NET and AJAX but those technologies tend to have more of a bleed-over between designer and developer,” he says. “WPF has a very logical but physical break with the business functionality that allows the UI designer to provide tools very rapidly. It makes it easier to quickly visualize data in many different ways.”

Whereas once upon a time firms were reporting consolidated statement information once a quarter or monthly, now monthly information is viewed as one month out-of-date, Lattimore-Gay notes. By leveraging portal type structures, firms are able to make that type of data available daily.

“The bottom line is that 99 percent of PCs on traders’ desks are either XP or Vista, so WPF leverages that fact for powerful applications that provide data quickly,” Lattimore-Gay says.

In another example, he explains, “If I am looking at a stress test scenario, the portal provides a set of data that WPF can interpret with line charts or bar charts, allowing users to drill down into the lowest level of detail.”

That speed and agility is giving firms an essential edge in competing in today’s hedge fund market.

“In today’s market users need to have data at their fingertips rather than having to dip into three different applications to access it,” Lattimore-Gay says.

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Michael DeSanti

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Brian Slater

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David Lattimore-Gay

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