press release
ensemble announces GSTPA-supportive STP solution from SunGard Business Integration
Issued by: Tin Can Communications     Quick Print   Send to Friend
[Johannesburg, 22 September 2000] - ensemble, a provider of business and technology solutions to the financial markets industry, and distributor of SunGard Business Integration's MINT Knowledge products, has announced the launch of a new message adapter from the US-based vendor.
According to Richard Shaw, director of ensemble, the new adapter is being developed in support of the Global Straight Through Processing Association's (GSTPA) initiative to create an industry-owned utility for cross-border matching. "ensemble will distribute the Transaction Flow Manager (TFM) adapter and provide support for it locally," says Shaw.

"The message adapter will enable connectivity to the GSTPA's TFM by pilot participants," he explains. "ensemble, together with SunGard Business Integration, supports a broad range of financial protocols for connectivity to industry standard networks, such as SWIFT and FIX."

According to Shaw, the primary objective of the GSTPA initiative is to accelerate the flow of cross-border trade information and to improve the accuracy, completeness and timeliness of such information for the benefit of investment managers, broker/dealers and global custodians. "The core of the GSTPA initiative is TFM, which will track, number, timestamp and route cross-border trade information and will perform a number of matching, enrichment and other value-added functions for the benefit of participants," he adds.

SunGard Business Integration's MINT Knowledge Broker and TFM Adapter will utilise advanced data modelling, transformation and connectivity tools to enable full TFM connectivity. "As the interface between a participating financial institution's internal applications and the external TFM, the MINT Knowledge Broker will allow participants to implement the GSTPA solution," explains Shaw.

"The current cross-border trade processing environment is characterised by manual procedures, multiple service providers, incompatible databases, lack of standardisation, relatively high error rates, excessive costs and a high rate of expensive failed trades," comments Hagay Shefi, president and COO of SunGard Business Integration. "The MINT Knowledge solutions have been designed to eliminate these trade processing bottlenecks by employing a hub topology and providing one of the largest portfolios of financial protocols. We are committed to enabling the GSTPA solution for SunGard customers."

SunGard Business Integration's MINT Knowledge Solutions will also act as the main TFM enabler within SunGard's range of financial applications. To date, a number of SunGard applications have used the MINT

Knowledge Family in order to facilitate both internal integration with other SunGard applications and connectivity to external networks. By establishing financial protocol connectivity through the MINT Knowledge Broker, a SunGard application will automatically become TFM ready, thereby increasing the overall number of TFM-enabled SunGard applications.


SunGard Business Integration

SunGard Business Integration is a leading provider of intelligent middleware and enterprise application integration solutions designed exclusively for the financial services industry. Based on the company's knowledge of the complex transaction processes required in financial services, these solutions significantly reduce the effort of integration across organisations, as well as across disparate incompatible systems. SunGard Business Integration solutions empower users by providing

the business intelligence, rules and definitions for message processing (including message translation, transformation, enrichment and routing). SunGard Business Integration solutions are installed at major financial services institutions worldwide.

SunGard

SunGard Business Integration is an operating unit of SunGard, a global leader in integrated IT solutions and eProcessing for financial services. SunGard is also the pioneer and a leading provider of high-availability infrastructure for business continuity. With annual revenues in excess of $1 billion, SunGard serves more than 10,000 clients in over 50 countries, including 47 of the world's 50 largest financial services institutions. Visit SunGard at www.sungard.com.

ensemble

ensemble, established in 1996, is focused on providing technology solutions to the banking and investment management sectors in the South Africa. Getronics has a 35% share-holding in ensemble. ensemble's major technological value lies in its vast knowledge of Relational Databases, Object Orientation, Microsoft technology and the latest Internet and Intranet development tools and packages. With its current structure and alliances, ensemble has access to many IT professionals, best of breed packages and frameworks, countrywide roll-out and deploymen capabilities, helpdesk infrastructure, as well as a solid financial backbone.
Visit ensemble at www.ensemble.co.za