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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, deployable Web solutions.
Letter from the Editor
Welcome to the Winter Edition of the Microsoft Financial Services Newsletter for Developers. And what an exciting winter this is for developers! Microsoft recently launched our new version of the Application Platform, which includes a new version of Visual Studio, an update to the messaging and orchestration product BizTalk, and a very exciting new version of SQL Server. Although many of you have had a chance to attend one of the launch events, I have summarized some of the key points of the launch that I believe are most beneficial to our efforts in the Financial Services industry. These include the following:
Platform for mission-critical applications
The latest SAP Sales and Distribution three-tier standard application benchmark running on HP and Intel hardware delivered record-breaking results with 93,000 concurrent users. This is 3.5 times more scalable than SQL Server 2000.
Superior price/performance
Microsoft, with industry partners AMD, Bull, HP, Intel, NEC and Unisys, announced several new TPC benchmarks running SQL Server 2005 that demonstrate its industry-leading value and performance.
Benefits of integration
Validating the integration of SQL Server 2005 and the .NET Framework 2.0, new benchmarks show that the platform provides 183 percent better performance than equivalently coded EJB-applications running on IBM WebSphere 6.0 against and Oracle 10G backend at half the cost of IBM WebSphere running on RedHat Linux Advanced Server.
Power of 64-bit
New benchmark demonstrates the significant advantage that the 64-bit architecture provides in terms of memory addressability and the specific midtier and data-tier scenarios where customers can look to 64-bit systems to significantly outperform 32-bit systems.
For Launch Event information, please visit the Web site.
We have several upcoming events that I am very excited to announce. This includes the second annual .NET Unwrapped webcast week for Financial Services which will be held February 13th -17th and the fourth annual Financial Services Developers Conference which will be held April 24th-25th in NYC. These premier events will focus on the latest tools and strategies for technology enabling in the Banking, Capital Markets, and Insurance industries. Please plan on joining Microsoft and our Partners at these events.
Finally I want to share some great customer successes that are included in the Winter Edition of the Newsletter. This includes the Title and Escrow System at First American Title, the Market Data Dissemination System (MDDS) at NASDAQ and the new TreasuryVision solution launched by the Global Cash and Investment Banking Group at Citigroup. Some truly industry leading solutions built with the power of the Microsoft Platform.
As always, please take some time and let me know what you think about the launch of the new applications platform. Your comments and insight are greatly appreciated as we work to build a strong developer community in Financial Services.
Sincerely,
Michael K. Wons, Technology Strategy Director, World-wide Financial Services Group
Mikewons@microsoft.com
What's New
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Visit the Visual Studio Developer Center for Your Complete Guide to the New Version
New tools tailored to help you take on your software development challenges—that is what Visual Studio 2005 is all about. This new release provides a range of tools that offer many benefits for individual developers and software development teams, enabling you to quickly build dynamic Windows, Web, mobile, and Office-based solutions; Communicate and collaborate more effectively within your software teams, and ensure quality early and often throughout the development process. Watch the Visual Studio, SQL Server, and BizTalk Server launch event. Upgrade now to Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite, Learn how to extend Visual Studio with over 800 products from over 250 vendors. Find out where to register your copy of Visual Studio for access to exclusive content.
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Inside Information for Developers
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Summary: Learn about the new native APIs in Windows Mobile in this self-paced hands-on lab. You will improve on an existing application by making use of these new interfaces. When you complete this lab, you will be ready to use these APIs to simplify your existing code or extend your applications to make use of the many new capabilities in Windows Mobile 5.0.
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Web Services Enhancements for .NET (WSE) is a product that enables you to build secure Web services quickly and easily. This article describes the goals behind the WSE 3.0 release, focusing on the major features and how these can be used to develop distributed, secure, and interoperable applications based on the latest Web service specifications.
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This article is based on a prerelease version of Web Service Enhancements 3.0. All information is subject to change. This article discusses: Securing Web services using Web Service Enhancements 3.0
Writing custom policy assertions Integrating with Enterprise Library and Authorization Manager for task-based authorization.
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The new generation of Microsoft certifications is more specific and targeted to reflect the detail of what you do and to prove your expertise to those who need to know. Consisting of three series and four credentials, the new generation of Microsoft certifications provides a simpler and more targeted framework for IT managers to validate core technical, professional, and architectural skills. It also provides professionals in the IT industry with a more relevant, flexible, and cost-effective way to showcase their skills.
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White Papers
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Financial services organizations are challenged to deliver greater market differentiation and operational excellence to compete in today’s global marketplace. Microsoft Financial Services offers rich, comprehensive collaboration technology to empower information workers to work more productively, enabling banks, insurance companies, and capital markets to realize tangible business benefits.
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Business decision makers deploying Microsoft SQL Server technologies have adopted SQL Server 2005 because it optimizes their IT infrastructure for growth and improves their alignment with key business objectives. With up to 35 percent faster transaction processing, advanced business intelligence solutions, and enhanced developer productivity, SQL Server 2005 builds on the strengths of SQL Server 2000. Enterprise and midmarket organizations upgrading to SQL Server 2005 will not only accelerate growth but also open exciting new opportunities for database administrators, developers, and IT decision makers.
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experience the Power of the Platform
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First American Title Insurance Company, the second-largest title insurance company in the United States, upgraded an integrated title and escrow system that unified disparate systems into a centralized database hosted on a 64-bit Platform running on an HP Integrity Superdome with 32 Intel Itanium 64-bit processors. The centrally hosted SQL Server database, with more than 1 terabyte of information, supports 12,000 users in 1,300 offices.
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NASDAQ, which became the world’s first electronic stock market in 1971 and remains the largest U.S. electronic stock market, is constantly looking for more-efficient ways to serve its members. As the organization prepared to retire its aging Tandem mainframes, it deployed Microsoft SQL Server 2005 on two 4-node Dell PowerEdge 6850 clusters to support its Market Data Dissemination System (MDDS). Every trade that is processed in the NASDAQ marketplace goes through the MDDS system, with SQL Server 2005 handling some 5,000 transactions per second at market open. SQL Server 2005 simultaneously handles about 100,000 queries a day, using SQL Server 2005 Snapshot Isolation to support real-time queries against the data without slowing the database. NASDAQ is enjoying a lower total cost of ownership compared to the Tandem Enscribe system that the SQL Server 2005 deployment has replaced.
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“Large companies, whether they are multinational or regional, have banking and financial accounts all over the globe,” explains Gary Greenwald, Managing Director of Information Products at Global Transaction Services, a division of Citigroup Corporate and Investment Banking. “They range from Demand Deposit Accounts, to short-term investments, to debt. A major corporation could have thousands of accounts with many, many banks. One of the challenges of almost every treasurer I talk to is visibility into and control of the information and processes around their cash and investments.”
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Events
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Please join us for our week long webcast series in February - .NET Unwrapped for Financial Services. In its second year, Microsoft’s vertically focused webcast series will provide over a dozen free webcasts filled with best practices, implementation and trends with Microsoft technology in financial services. Registration for these webcasts will be available in early-mid January.
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April 24–25, 2006, Millennium Broadway Hotel, New York, NY
Please join us for the annual Microsoft Financial Services Developer Conference. Now in its fourth year, it is the leading event for developers and architects in the financial services industry. The conference offers developers the opportunity to gain insight into the latest and upcoming Microsoft technologies for the banking, insurance, and capital-markets industries. You will walk away with best practices from industry peers, the latest tools and technologies from Microsoft, as well as information on security and the future roadmap for development technologies. In addition, the conference will offer an excellent opportunity for networking with your peers in financial services.
To register and for details, please visit: Microsoft Events, or call 1-877-673-8368 and quote Event ID# 1032287389.
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Experience many of the new features in SQL Server 2005, including CLR integration, XML support, and deep business intelligence integration.
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Webcasts
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These webcasts will help prepare you to maximize your experience with Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005, and BizTalk Server 2006.
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