Nirvana Systems and DBC Form Alliance
Austin, Texas-based Nirvana Systems has interfaced its OmniTrader market analysis software with Hayward, Calif.-based Data Broadcasting Corp.'s (DBC) eSignal market data application. The integration has given clients of OmniTrader--which provides trading tips on hot stocks, futures and mutual funds--access to a broad spectrum of real-time data and news. Separately, Nirvana is scheduled to go live in December with OmniTrader 2000, a Web-driven version of its flagship product.
Ed Downs, chief executive officer and founder of Nirvana, says that OmniTrader--which is targeted primarily at individual investors, day traders and brokers--went live with its eSignal interface around two months ago. Via eSignal, OmniTrader users can tap into real-time, fundamental and historical market data--as well as interday and intraday charts and real-time news from CBS MarketWatch, Dow Jones News Service and Comtex.
Downs says that OmniTrader--which runs on Windows NT, Windows 95 and Windows 98 PCs--uses a communications interface to access eSignal's servers. Through that interface, OmniTrader clients receive a gateway to eSignal's data.
Though Downs describes the connection between eSignal and OmniTrader as "seamless" to the end-user, OmniTrader clients do have to install eSignal on their desktop PCs. Through a product call data manager, he says, OmniTrader clients can go DBC's Web site, download eSignal and install it on their PCs.
The data manager software is available free-of-charge to OmniTrader clients, but those clients do have to pay a standard market data fee to DBC for using eSignal. "The data relationship of the OmniTrader client is completely with eSignal... We're just providing software that can read that application," says Downs.
While declining to specify which other market data suppliers Nirvana evaluated before deciding to partner with DBC, Downs says that eSignal's industry presence and client based pushed the system over the top. "As far as the technical side of things, they're pretty close to the other guys out there in terms of speed of delivery and what they offer," says Downs. "But eSignal... has been around the longest. They're very robust, and have the largest user base of the established data vendors. So once they created a way for companies like us to talk to their data service, it was just a no-brainer decision."
At its core, OmniTrader is an automated tool investors use to ameliorate the time it takes them analyze securities and pull the trigger on trades. The soon-to-be-launched OmniTrader 2000, meanwhile, is best described as an Internet accessible "education and informational" market analysis "resource," says Downs.
Services available via OmniTrader 2000 will include tutorials on how to trade. "That product will be very tightly integrated with our Web site... and will have all the functionality of OmniTrader, plus this tight connection with the company. So clients can communicate with us during the day, get information from us during the day and after the market closes," Downs says.
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