Platform computing builds grid momentum in financial services.

Web Services on Wall Street--Continuing its momentum as the leader in grid computing software, Platform Computing Inc. has announced Platform Symphony 2.0, the most powerful production- proven, enterprise-class grid computing software available for financial services institutions.

Platform Symphony 2.0 is specifically designed to help financial services institutions meet the business-critical needs associated with capital markets trading and risk management by accelerating time-sensitive and compute-intensive applications over a virtualized computing infrastructure, delivering faster and more accurate results as well as increased cost savings. Leading financial institutions around the world, including JPMorgan Chase and Groupe Societe Generale are using Platform Symphony to improve front- and back-office application performance, deliver guaranteed service execution and reduce processing times from days or hours to minutes.

"Societe Generale needed to roll out a grid computing solution very quickly and reliably. Key factors in choosing Platform Computing's grid computing software were the company's 10-years plus experience in delivering a proven, reliable and mature product and quality of support and responsiveness in Europe," said Alain Benoist, CIO--Debt & Finance for SG Corporate and Investment Banking. "Time to market has been another important measurement of ROI, and we've been able to implement a grid computing solution in a few months. Also a priority has been the lower cost of supervision and management which has meant both increased ease of administration and cost effectiveness."

Built on a foundation of 11 years of high performance grid computing experience, Platform Symphony 2.0 is based on a common infrastructure, which enables organizations to reuse existing services and maximize ROI and reduce deployment time, by quickly and easily scaling throughout the enterprise.

"Financial services organizations require more flexible standards-based architectures which ultimately lower TCO and break down LOB and enterprise silos," said Larry Tabb, founder and CEO, The Tabb Group. "Grid computing products allow for access to computing power when needed, as needed for better application reliability, manageability and performance which in turn means reduced credit and market risk and increased business continuity."

The financial services industry is increasingly challenged with achieving more application performance and reduced total cost of IT ownership while still ensuring a high level of service execution, security and control. Platform Symphony Version 2.0 addresses these challenges in one powerful package by offering a comprehensive set of grid-powered capabilities engineered for business-critical front- and back-office operations. To remove the uncertainty and doubt associated with significant IT changes, Platform Symphony Version 2.0 works with the legacy hardware, operating systems and programming languages found in the typical financial institution, delivering significantly higher return on assets and time to deployment.