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For firms that have multiple security master files, or for some other reason realize that they need a better way to manage reference data across the board, but lack the time and resources to do the necessary data cleanups, data distribution and data integrations, Broadridge (formerly ADP Brokerage Services), GoldenSource and IBM teamed up today to announce a joint solution.

At the SIFMA show today, Frank De Maria, global head of derivative client services and operations at Merrill Lynch, offered an interesting quote from Alan Greenspan, made six weeks ago: “I was shocked to find credit derivatives settlement and clearing operated with 19th century technology.” He was talking about trades being handled by phone, fax and paper. De Maria then Googled other 19th century inventions and found the stapler, barbed wire, dynamite and the zipper among them. Point being, it's time for modernization. Merrill Lynch and 13 other Wall Street firms have been working with the DTCC to build a data warehouse for derivatives, such that all derivatives trading data are in one place and there's one "golden copy" of every trade record.

It's the first day of the SIFMA Operations Conference here in sunny, 90-degrees Orlando, FL, although as several of this morning's speakers noted, you wouldn't know it because of the sealed, artificial air-conditioned environment we're in. But don't pity us poor conference-goers -- many of the 700 attendees golfed all day yesterday and last night's outdoor cocktail reception on a patio of the Gaylord Palms Resort featured perfect, low-humidity weather, a steel drum band, a generous open bar, crab cakes and sushi. This morning, Ellyn McColgan, president of distribution and operations at Fidelity Investments and co-chair of SIFMA's Board of Directors gave an update on SIFMA's activities and the progress made in integrating the Securities Industry Association and the Bond Market Association, which was approved in 2006.

At the Linux on Wall Street show today at the Roosevelt Hotel, there was much discussion of the increasing use of the Linux open-source operating system and open source in general on the Street, which is being driven partly by the desire to cut costs and partly by the appeal of particular applications that happen to be open source. “Companies look at, does this solve my business problem, regardless of whether it’s open source,” says Monica Kumar, senior director of product marketing, Linux and open source at Oracle. For instance, while Eclipse open-source development tools are popular on the Street, open-source CRM and ERP are not (and there are few open-source offerings in these categories). Here are a few things I learned at the show today:

When Scott Handy, IBM’s vice president worldwide marketing and strategy for System p, says he likes to evangelize, he’s kidding. But although his delivery is low-key, evangelize he does. In his core message, you and I are not going to hell, but Sun Microsystems’ Solaris server sales might be. After assuring us that the “p” in System p stands for “performance,” Handy told us what’s new with System p, including IBM’s announcement this morning that x86 Red Hat and Novell Linux [the open source Unix-like operating system] applications can now run on it. What is in this for you? It’s another option for server consolidation.

After expelling third-party algorithms one month ago from passing through its block market, Pipeline Trading Systems LLC has invented a method of predicting the performance of third-party algorithms that
its customers can still access through DMA platforms.

On Friday, Pipeline said it has created an Algorithm Switching Engine that is able to predict the performance of third-party algorithmic trading strategies and offer these algorithms to traders while they are waiting for a match in the block marketplace. This could help buy-side traders figure out what is the best performing algorithm to use for a given stock at any moment in time, which has been a source of confusion for the institutions bombarded with algorithms.

If you’re an IT executive, stand tall – you’re more important than you (and others) may give yourself credit for. According to the partial results of a survey of 220 senior executives and IT managers released today, IT performance is absolutely critical to overall revenue. The study, which was commissioned by business service management software vendor Managed Objects, found that 66% of senior executives think IT systems are so important that “we can’t earn our revenue at all without them running properly” and an additional 27% feel that revenue would slow significantly if key systems weren’t accessible (another 6% said productivity would be reduced by IT problems).

The SEC's Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations (OCIE) today announced the availability of a new online resource for anti-money laundering (AML) information. The "AML Source Tool" compiles and organizes all of the major rules and regulations surrounding AML.

"We're hoping that this AML Source Tool will assist broker-dealers with their AML compliance efforts," said Lori Richards, director of OCIE, in a release. "It puts all AML requirements in one easy-to-reference location. While we initially developed the Source Tool for our own SEC examiners, we think it also will be an invaluable reference tool for broker-dealers and their internal AML compliance staff."

This morning, I dropped in on the thinktank: data center Expert Series Tour our sister publication Network Computing is running; today’s event was at the posh St. Regis Hotel in New York City (my clothes are almost starting to dry). Art Wittmann, Network Computing’s Editor in Chief, zeroed in on some of the key issues facing data managers and executives trying to efficiently run data centers today. Most of the attendees had plans to build new data centers or remodel existing ones. Wittmann pointed out that although Gartner predicts IT spending will increase about 3.8% this year, that’s not a huge increase compared to the exploding growth in data center servers, cooling and power needs. He then offered suggestions for keeping costs down while maintaining data center expansion and performance.

Citi laid out its plans for a major restructuring as anticipated this morning. The financial supermarket expects to realize an extraordinary $2.1 billion in savings this year, which it expects to grow further, reaching $4.6 billion in 2009. While this news is stellar for shareholders, it is a dispiriting announcement for the bank's IT workers, as much of the savings will come from job cuts.

As the industry struggles with increasing data message rates with no end in sight, market data technology providers are searching for alternative solutions to the current method of throwing more boxes at the problem.

Two weeks ago, ACTIV Financial, an aggregator of data feeds and low-latency direct-exchange feed technology, announced that it’s porting, its next generation market data ticker plant solution, directly onto silicon.

Are you exposed to too much foreign exchange risk? Most companies don’t know the answer to this question, according to executives at FiREapps, who released version 3.5 of their eponymous corporate foreign exchange management software today. The software sends queries out to a company’s financial systems and analyzes its corporate-wide foreign exchange exposures, based on real-time currency data.

International Stock Exchange boss and industry luminary David Krell announced his retirement this week, effective at the end of the year. While he will vacate the role of CEO, the exchange's Board intends to elect him as Chairman. He will be succeeded by current COO Gary Katz.

Katz and Krell have enjoyed 21 years working together, and co-founded ISE ten years ago.

The April 16 compliance date for SEC Rule 22c-2 is fast approaching, and in less than two weeks, mutual funds and their intermediaries will have to have fleshed out their information-sharing agreements. Last year, funds and intermediaries alike reported their struggle to develop these agreements, which should now be nearly complete.

Did you know that when you create an application using Java or .net, anyone can drag and drop that executable to a free decompilation tool such as Reflector (for .net) and then be able to see all the source code behind it? Such examining of code and perhaps reverse engineering can be done for benign reasons – to debug the application, for instance, or to provide better training or support. But sneak-peeking at software code can also be done maliciously, by competitors, disgruntled employees or hackers who want to steal intellectual property or get into a computer system. Obfuscation software inserts additional code into an application to prevent a would-be IP thief or hacker from being able to reverse-engineer the code.

The boom in hosted software is spilling over into email and electronic records archival. EDS and AXS-One announced last week that EDS will provide hosting for AXS-One’s Compliance Platform, which stores electronic documents, emails, instant messages, reports, SAP data and desktop files according to predefined compliance policies. The software is designed to meet the requirements of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

Hosted archiving in theory provides instant usability and scalability, that's why many companies ship their back files out to Iron Mountain and others. In this case, users can log onto the web-based AXS-One Content Portal and search and retrieve files of all kinds. For instance, they can readily search Lotus Notes emails and view retrieved emails with search terms highlighted.

Dallas-based Placemark Investments, went live with FIX Flyer’s online service for formatting equity block trades and automating the allocations that are sent back to the brokers offering these programs, the investment adviser announced today.

With the boom in unified managed accounts for retail investors, Placemark needed a way to automate the tens of thousands of allocations it sends daily to sponsor organizations — ranging from small regional brokers to large wire houses.

Registered investment advisors, the 10,000 small firms that now manage over $1.7 trillion in assets, talk a lot about the paperless office at conferences and such, but apparently are slow to adopt it. “RIAs are small businesses where the owner ends up acting as CTO and making all the technology decisions,” says Timothy Welsh, president of Nexus Strategy, a technology consulting firm to RIAs. “Many use the Advent portfolio management system and a CRM program like Goldmine. Managing paper is one of their last technology frontiers -- only one in ten registered investment advisors has implemented document management software. What’s missing is not the desire to go paperless, because everyone wants to become more efficient, but the process for how to get there.”

The very foundation of market regulation in the U.S. is under question, and could soon follow the model of European regulators, indicated NASD CEO Mary Schapiro at an industry conference last week. It seems as though rule-based lawmaking is slowly going the way of the buffalo and a principles-based approach, such as that utilized by the U.K.'s Financial Services Authority, is increasingly becoming en vogue.

In a follow-up to the first e-discovery blog entry, it seems that the courts are starting to hear cases on the new e-discovery rules. The courts are starting to work. It’s not that the courts haven’t been busy, but just now, we’re starting to see rulings that take into consideration the new Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP).

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