Smartstream says it has sold the TLM Financial Messaging platform that came with its Connextive acquisition to Caja Madrid, which is using it for its migration to SWIFTNet.
Phase 1 of the project involves migrating Caja Madrid off their existing legacy based Merva SWIFTFin Gateway to SWIFT’s SWIFTNet Gateway. The Merva solution, sold by IBM, runs on an OS/390 machine. IBM’s proposed technical solution to linking to SWIFTNet involves placing a Websphere EJB server between Merva and SWIFT’s SWIFTNet Link software connecting over MQ series.
“Whilst enabling connectivity, [this] adds to the technical complexity of any banks infrastructure,” says a Smartstream spokeswoman. “It also does not address the issue of being able to take on additional SWIFTNet value add services by enabling quick and easy connectivity to in-house processing systems. For this reason a number of financial institutions will and are looking for alternatives to the Merva solution.”
Smartstrea says Caja Madrid selected TLM Financial Messaging after a competitive review which involved multiple vendors. A review team evaluated competitive products on and off site to assess product functionality, technology, financial messaging experience and the ability to provide support. “TLM Financial Messaging comprehensively beat every other vendor across all categories,” says Smartstream.
TLM Financial Messaging was the only product to provide a modern Java/J2EE based architecture and a Web based operations interface.
“SmartStream’s TLM Financial Messaging provides us with an industry leading transaction management architecture,” says Manuel Cobo Barroso, General Sub-Director, Operations Area Director of Caja Madrid. “We selected TLM Financial Messaging due to its ease of use and superior SWIFT messaging functionality. Key to our decision was TLM’s ability to plug into the existing infrastructure of Caja Madrid without any changes to the core applications. The total cost of ownership
of TLM is lower than competing solutions. It’s flexible architecture will allow us to be up and running in a short timeframe. In addition, a code free environment gives us complete user configurability, enabling us to manage changes to the solution, which is fundamental as we hope to use this new technology for much wider and complex financial transaction management workflows in the near future.”
“We are delighted by this success with Caja Madrid,” adds Luis Casado, Managing Director, SmartStream Iberia. “This is our first competitive win following our acquisition of Connextive Inc. in June. Our ability to win this deal in such a short period of time is evidence that our approach to transaction processing is the right one. Financial institutions today want to supplement existing IT systems not simply replace them. With our STP Control Architecture they can do just that. By deploying our architecture they are able to eliminate fragmentation and integrate disparate systems to realise of end-to-end, real time control of risk and operations within financial institutions.”