Microsoft Swift Package Final

By Maria Trombly | Securities Industry News | April 12, 2004

April 12, 2004 - Last week, Microsoft announced the full availability of the BizTalk Accelerator for Swift after some delays. The product, which runs on the BizTalk server, is billed as a way to cut costs and speed implementation times for Swift integration for small, medium and large brokerage firms.

Small firms will be able to manually generate Swift messages through a standard InfoPath interface, which is part of the Microsoft Office Suite. "This is especially attractive to small broker-dealers, for example, who don't have sophisticated systems but might want to send Swift messages to a service bureau or another broker-dealer," said Josh Weisberg, senior product manager for e-business servers at Microsoft.

Larger firms could also use the InfoPath interface, he added. "There are a number of instances where you might want to have a human workflow component," he said. "Say, if you want to do a one-off transaction, or repair a transaction."

The price for a standard, single-server entry-level version of the product starts at $5,000. There's also an enterprise version, with higher performance and resilience, which costs $25,000 a processor, Weisberg said. The licensing costs are 30 to 60 percent cheaper that other Swift integration solutions, he added.
Customers will be able to purchase the BizTalk Accelerator by the end of the month, he said. Because the BizTalk product is easier to integrate than other, more specialized systems, a typical implementation takes five to 12 weeks, compared to four to 12 months for other Swift products, said Weisberg.

But there are concerns that the BizTalk server is not suitable for the largest enterprises. "I don't know of any place where it's being used for large-scale use, for high-volume processing," said Damon Kovelsky, an analyst with Framingham, Mass.-based Financial Insights, and he noted that Microsoft is hardly the first to claim a dramatic price reduction for Swift connectivity. "They all say that," he said.

Kovelsky added that Microsoft doesn't yet have Swift certification, as many other vendors do, though Weisberg said certification is expected within two to three months.

Several institutions are already using Microsoft's Swift product, which was first unveiled last October for beta testing. Siemens KAG, uses it for straight-through processing, by automating financial messaging to and from custodians over the Swift network. According to Josef Mehl, head of administration securities at Siemens, the firm used the Swift accelerator in conjunction with an STP product from consultancy Comit Gruppe. Thus, Siemens was able to automate its trade process and save time and money, Mehl said.

Nicholas-Applegate Capital Management, also beta tested the new accelerator. According to CTO Daniel Stroot, this allowed the firm to replace its current post-trade STP middleware with a more cost-effective solution.

Programmers can use the skills they already have to implement Microsoft's solution, said Weisberg. "We're using off-the-shelf tools and developer interfaces like .Net that are widely adopted."

About a year and a half ago, Microsoft released a partial Swift solution, the BizTalk Accelerator for financial services. Unlike last week's release, however, the earlier product only supported about 30 percent of all Swift messages--the current product offers 100-percent coverage, Weisberg said. The BizTalk Accelerator is based on the 2004 release of BizTalk, announced six weeks ago. "BizTalk server supports Web services and .Net," he added. "While the Swift network does not currently offer Web services connectivity, companies can use Web services internally to integrate with back-end applications."