Microsoft Announces Next-Generation Financial Messaging Solution to Simplify Payments Processing and Integration to SWIFTNet

HONG KONG -

- New Microsoft offering lowers the cost of messaging for corporate treasuries and financial services firms.

Microsoft Corp. today announced the Financial Messaging Service Bus, a componentized financial services industry integration solution built upon the highly acclaimed Microsoft BizTalk Server 2009. By providing pre-built service components, the Financial Messaging Service Bus simplifies mission-critical financial messaging for banks, payments processors and other financial institutions, and provides a solution platform for Microsoft technology partners. The Financial Messaging Service Bus not only applies to SWIFT or payments, but is extensible across all financial messaging systems as an integration framework allowing new solutions to be built and to co-exist with legacy applications as part of a technology renewal program. The Financial Messaging Service Bus supports Microsoft BizTalk Accelerator for SWIFT, which has been awarded the SWIFTReady Financial EAI 2009 label - thereby achieving six consecutive years of SWIFT certification. The announcement was made at SWIFT’s Sibos 2009, the industry’s premier global financial services forum.

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The Financial Messaging Service Bus cuts the cost of development, and speeds up the implementation process by providing reusable service-oriented architecture (SOA) components to simplify financial messaging integration, rather than requiring extensive onsite process engineering. It saves financial services industry clients and technology solutions partners substantial time and money in building and implementing payments and capital markets solutions.

“Financial messaging and integration are becoming commoditized - and should be,” said Andy Schmidt, research director for Global Payments at TowerGroup. “Banks need a simpler, more cost-effective way to re-engineer payments processes but should be ensuring that they don’t reinforce silos. There is a real need to use out-of-the-box components that reduce the complexity of integration, and that both build on and with existing technology, to avoid building costly technology islands.”

The Financial Messaging Service Bus utilizes the Microsoft BizTalk Server Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) Toolkit for data transformation and transaction workflow management, and extends the standard ESB to add audit trail and business activity monitoring specific to financial services. Furthermore, Financial Messaging Service Bus components can be integrated easily with Microsoft Office products, including Excel and SharePoint, for a complete operations management and business intelligence solution.

“Financial messaging is the cornerstone for technology renewal in banks and other financial services firms,” said Susan Hauser, vice president of Worldwide Financial Services at Microsoft. “Secure and reliable transaction delivery is essential to financial services firms, but technology solutions must also be cost-effective to implement and manage. Our long-standing partnership with SWIFT, and our commitment to support technology partners, uniquely positions us to provide these reliable and cost-effective solutions to all financial institutions.”

In the past year Microsoft has added BizTalk Server support for Alliance Lite, thereby enabling SWIFTNet connectivity across the Internet.

“This new Microsoft financial messaging solution offering underscores the continuing strength of our global partnership,” said Gottfried Leibbrandt, head of markets for SWIFT. “With this announcement, Microsoft demonstrates its continuing commitment to SWIFT clients and the global financial services community.”

“Financial messaging is the basis for interoperability among banks in the global financial services community,” said Darrell Cavens, director for BizTalk Server at Microsoft. “Microsoft is pleased to advance its relationship with SWIFT to bring world-class products to an industry that demands mission-critical, standards-based solutions.”

The Financial Messaging Service Bus is currently available to all customers through select Microsoft financial services community partners. Zlatko Jegdic, eBusiness director of Saga, a longstanding partner of Microsoft in Europe, commented, “As a Gold Certified Microsoft partner, we look to leverage the technology stack for client solutions. The components delivered with the Financial Messaging Service Bus allow us to allocate more resources to developing value-add solution functionality and spend less time on messaging integration for our clients.”

“Customers can lower the cost of financial messaging by simplifying the way payments processes are developed,” said Andy Orent, director, Banking and Capital Markets, Financial Services Industry, HP. “Microsoft’s platform aligns with HP’s payments architecture, known as Integration Framework for Payments (IF4P), which allows customers to help manage cost and accelerate growth.”

Financial messaging is a commodity service within payments and capital markets processing, and the Financial Messaging Service Bus is designed to provide a simpler, configurable approach to messaging that delivers significant implementation and operational efficiencies for financial institutions.

“One consistent challenge we see across the securities industry is streamlining the workflow and mapping between FIX and SWIFT messages,” said Kevin Houstoun, chairman of Rapid Addition Ltd. and co-chairman of the Global Technical Committee for FIX Protocol Ltd. “Technology such as Microsoft’s Financial Messaging Service Bus middleware and Rapid Addition’s FIX Shortcut for Financial Messaging Service Bus holds great promise in overcoming this challenge, as it allows banks and brokers to automate these processes at a lower total cost than traditional software.”

With the Financial Messaging Service Bus, Microsoft addresses the need for a systemic approach to messaging integration across the financial services industry. As a result, banks now can further leverage an investment in BizTalk Server as an infrastructure for payments and SWIFT messaging - and extend that to support new financial applications in any geographic location.

Microsoft’s Financial Messaging Service Bus delivers a number of benefits that lower the cost of messaging for corporate treasuries and financial services firms:

- By providing pre-built service components, Financial Messaging Service Bus simplifies mission-critical financial messaging for banks, payments processors and other financial institutions, and provides a solution platform for Microsoft technology partners. - Financial Messaging Service Bus leverages the BizTalk Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) Toolkit data transformation and transaction workflow management, and extends the standard ESB to add audit trail and business activity monitoring specific to financial services. - Financial Messaging Service Bus greatly improves time to market for many complex solutions in the banking and capital markets industries. Although applicable in many financial messaging scenarios, one key area is simplifying the integration to SWIFT for payment and FIX applications.

Additional information can be found at www.microsoft.com/financialservices.

About Microsoft in Financial Services

Microsoft’s Financial Services Group provides software that helps financial firms transform the customer, employee and operations experience so they can maximize opportunities for increased market share and profitability. Microsoft software helps empower people and IT staff within financial firms - and across key focus areas such as advisor platforms, channel renewal, insurance value chain, enterprise risk management and compliance, and payments. Through a combination of Microsoft- and partner-provided solutions, customers enable their employees to turn data into insight, transform ideas into action and turn change into opportunity. More information about Microsoft’s Financial Services Group can be found at www.microsoft.com/financialservices.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Source: Microsoft Corp.

Wendy Grover of Microsoft, +1-425-705-7609; or Chanda Gathani of Metia, +44-795-11-63615, chanda.gathani at metia.com / NOTE TO EDITORS: If you are interested in viewing additional information on Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft Web page at https://www.microsoft.com/presspass on Microsoft’s corporate information pages. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may since have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at https://www.microsoft.com/presspass/contactpr.mspx. / Logo: https://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20000822/MSFTLOGO