Notes from our "Guru Sessions"

The importance of clean, consistent and complete reference market data and the problems resulting from bad data are well-known challenges to successful achievement of STP and enterprise-wide risk management. Security masters, cross-reference databases and pricing masters sit at the source of all business transactions and rely on this market data to efficiently process critical information. Soliton's solution, TimeSquare, manages a firm's market data workflow from sourcing to distribution in an automated end-to-end process, enabling firms to significantly reduce the risks associated with poor data quality.

When presenting TimeSquare solutions to potential customers, Soliton is often asked by clients and prospects to schedule a "Guru Session" to discuss concepts such as normalization, data quality and best of breed pricing. Typically, issues regarding the implementation of reference databases (e.g. a cross-reference database) are asked to be addressed at these sessions along with Soliton's methodology for building such systems. Attempting to structure a solution by starting with the desired result causes implementation problems and misconceptions to surface in the discussion.

Soliton's approach emphasizes the importance of first assessing the market data vendor feeds, the basic building blocks that must be understood in detail as raw data feeds. By analyzing the feeds without prior assumptions about their data content, one can derive a clear understanding of the workflows necessary to correctly place the data in a managed environment where it can be analyzed further.

Starting from a solid base of known market data from each vendor feed, calculations, aggregations and data quality tests may be developed and vetted at each stage of the development process. Using this process facilitates clean and consistent data and results because business rules and logic can be tested before implementation.

Sourcing procedures, knowledge of the data within the feeds, workflow logic and usable vendor-specific schemas are the constants in developing any successful market data result. Soliton delivers software and market data feed expertise for a wide range of vendors, combined with a data management environment where proprietary business rules can be developed, validated and tested prior to commissioning and deployment.

If the goal is to centralize market data acquisition and make clean, consistent data available everywhere in the enterprise, TimeSquare software, TimeSquare workflow and Soliton's vendor-feed expertise will get you there sooner, more cost-effectively, and with significantly lower development and operational risk. Using TimeSquare to solve your market data workflow needs frees the firm's business and technical resources to work on applications that differentiate the firm in the marketplace.

About Soliton Inc.:

Founded in 1993, Soliton has continually provided high performance software products and services supporting an array of mission-critical applications for financial firms worldwide. TimeSquare, the flagship Soliton product released in 2000, is used by a variety of financial services companies including banks and investment firms to solve the problem of acquiring market data from multiple data vendors, managing it and exporting it to a firm's data warehouse or application servers.

Privately-held Soliton Inc. is headquartered in Toronto, with offices in New York, Rochester (NY), London and Copenhagen. For more information, visit www.soliton.com.

Soliton Associates
99 Wall Street, 17th Floor
New York, NY 10005
Phone: (212)344-9376

Contact Person: Bob Petrocchi
E-mail: [email protected]