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Welcome to the Microsoft Financial Services Newsletter for Developers. At Microsoft, we’re committed to serving the needs of developers and architects in the financial services industry. This newsletter will give you links to the latest resources, tools and technologies to help build fast, scalable, secure enterprise level solutions in Financial Services.
Letter from the Editor
Hello,
Welcome to the spring edition of the Microsoft Financial Services Newsletter for Developers. Since the winter 2007 issue, the financial markets continue to be roiled with negative news about the subprime mortgage issue. In probably the biggest news of the quarter, Bear Stearns, pushed to the brink of bankruptcy, was taken over by JP Morgan Chase for a fraction of what it was trading for just days earlier.
However, as reported in the April 14 issue of American Banker, many banking companies, analysts, and investment strategists say there is reason to believe the financial sector may be on the cusp of better days. They see the recent spate of capital-raising on Wall Street as an encouraging sign that equity investors, taking a long-term view, believe many banking and thrift companies are approaching a turnaround and will not be casualties of the credit turmoil.
In other news, the Sixth Annual Microsoft Developers Conference took place in New York on March 12 and 13. More than 600 Financial Services developers, architects, and business and technology leaders attended the conference and made it a great success!
This year’s main theme was High Performance Computing (HPC) and attendees heard from presenters across a wide spectrum of organizations -- including key partners and industry peers -- about how to harness the power of High Performance Computing to drive competitive advantage and time-to-market in financial services. Around the secondary theme of Software + Services (S+S), attendees heard how financial services organizations can create a shared architecture, programming model, and skill set that help shape and deliver consistent experiences throughout the enterprise, and across the Web, to PCs and other devices.
Brian Jackson
Technology Strategist for Banking
Worldwide Financial Services
Microsoft Corporation
Highlights from the Conference Included:
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WFS Innovation Awards. The 2008 award winners were selected for clearly demonstrating the advantage each solution provides its firm. This is especially important because gaining an advantage in the financial sector has increasingly become dependent on developing innovative technology. The winning solutions exhibit advanced application of Microsoft technology to solve practical business problems, streamline efficiency, and increase productivity in banking, investment management, and compliance functions within the firms.
The five winners were:
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Chicago Mercantile Exchange for its Auditing and Compliance Application
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Bank Of America for its Global Underwriting Solution
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Merrill Lynch for its Application Lifecycle Framework
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Piraeus Bank for its International eBanking Platform
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MAAKL MUTUAL Berhad for its Home Office Application
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Podcast from .NET Rocks! Attendees had the opportunity to participate in a LIVE Podcast on .NET Rocks! with Carl Franklin. .NET Rocks! ( http://www.dotnetrocks.com) is the Internet Audio Show for .Net developers that had 23 million downloads during 2007!
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Lab49 Developer Contest. WPF has enormous potential in finance to affect the way we visualize and interact with the complex, fast-moving sea of data within the industry. To help spur innovation within this new area, Lab49 held a contest with great prizes and a roster of WPF celebrity judges. Developers were asked to build interesting new applications to visualize and interact with financial data. Contestants registered on Lab49’s Web site and were given access to a dataset consisting of several years of historical prices and analyst earnings estimates for 150 stocks. Their challenge was to create an application using WPF to visualize or interact with the data in novel and innovative ways.
Screenshots of the winning applications can be found here.
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Willows: Women Leaders on Wall Street. In honor of National Women's History Month in March, we celebrated the accomplishments of female leaders and pioneers in Financial Services and Technology in a live panel discussion with our 2008 Women Leaders of Wall Street (Willows). This engaging, informative, and insightful discussion was moderated by Asli Bilgin, .NET Developer Evangelist, U.S. East Region DPE. The panelists included:
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Tracy Issel, Microsoft Corporation
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Samantha Panella, Raymond James
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Homa Siddiqui, Credit Suisse
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Susan Reed, Avanade
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What’s New
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Experience 17 new Silverlight 2 and 4 new Silverlight 1.0 gallery entries submitted by our community members. The entries include visit Russia with Russian Silverlight Airlines; listen to a Silverlight Podcast Player; see the Deep Zoom Collections, test your typing speed, and more.
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In this introductory video, Dan Waters will show you how to quickly build a deep zoom Silverlight 2 application.
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For those of you not lucky enough to attend MIX 2008, we have just released 27 video recordings of the Silverlight presentations from this recent event, totaling more than 30 hours of event coverage!
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Events
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Date: Tuesday, May 6
Time: 3:30 - 6:30 PM Eastern time
Location: New York Microsoft Office, 1290 Avenue of the Americas
This session will focus on Microsoft virtualization strategy and roadmap, drilling into topics such as application, hardware, and virtualization management. There will also be a short discussion on Policy Management in Microsoft SQL Server 2008. The session features Allen Stewart, Principal Program Manager on the Windows Team and Tom Davidson, Solution Specialist -- Banking and Capital Markets.
Register online or call 877.673.8368 with event ID 1032374375.
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ACORD LOMA Insurance Systems Forum 2008
Date: May 13 - 15
Location: Mandalay Bay Resort, Las Vegas
At the ACORD LOMA Insurance Systems Forum 2008, Microsoft will be demonstrating solutions for the dynamics of how we live, communicate, and work.
We will also introduce you to the interoperability capabilities of the Microsoft platform and Microsoft Insurance Value Chain solutions. Find out how we, and the solution providers who work with us, are developing global and industry-standards-based solutions to help your company integrate processes and lower operational costs.
You can visit us at booth #824.
SIFMA Technology Conference 2008
Date: June 10
Location: Hilton Hotel, New York City
Security Industry and Financial Markets Association’s (SIFMA) 28th Annual Technology Management Conference & Exhibit is the industry’s leading event with over 300 vendors and 7,000 attendees. The conference will address the rapidly changing world of technology and how the financial industry is using technology to drive productivity, comply with regulatory requirements, and adapt to converging markets, products, and investors.
Visit Microsoft at booth #2217.
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