The capital markets industry is faced with unprecedented challenges. The industry sees this as “the new normal” and firms are back to the drawing board to develop new business models to drive growth. Fierce global competition, increased regulatory scrutiny and oversight (especially regarding transparency), combined with increasingly complex asset classes, means many firms are navigating uncharted waters, trying to not only compete but also decipher the changing landscape.
Good thing Vincent Fily, Microsoft’s head of worldwide capital markets technology strategy, is offering some timely advice for them to consider.
He wrote the new Microsoft Industry Reference Architecture for Capital Markets (MIRA-CM), a framework that provides clarity on technology capabilities to unlock business innovation for anyone involved in making technology decisions in financial markets, from IT workers to executives.
“Capital Markets firms are striving to be faster and better than their competitors across the globe. At the same time, technology transformation is emerging as a key imperative to help businesses drive growth in this era of regulatory pressure, high levels of competition and a difficult economic environment” Fily said. “MIRA-CM is designed to serve as an innovation tool to help capital markets firms align business needs with technology solutions,” Fily said. “It provides a roadmap for the future with the architectural flexibility to deliver industry solutions on-premise or in the cloud. These capabilities include highly scalable infrastructure, secure data and application platforms, big data and predictive analytics, ultra-low latency processing, customer relationship management, workflow, productivity and collaboration, as well as a connected user experience.”
Microsoft is uniquely positioned to help the capital markets industry address these opportunities via its comprehensive range of mission-critical technology solutions and capabilities, which extend from front to back office, from device to data center, and from on-premise to the cloud.
“Driving profitability of capital markets divisions is becoming increasingly more complex as regulations and a challenging economic environment continues to stress operations. Moreover, the requirement for holistic risk measurement across operations is becoming critical to success,” said Steven R. O’Hanlon, chief executive officer and president of Numerix.
He continued: “The institution that can succeed in bringing big data and analytics together – in real time – will separate itself from the pack and drive a path to profitability in this new market paradigm. The MIRA-CM is a critical blueprint for organizations looking to succeed. The architecture clearly sets an institution on a path to fully leverage readily available Microsoft technologies to achieve the business success expected of trading operations.”
Visit Microsoft’s MIRA-CM page to read the white paper, and to learn more about how capital markets can best utilize technology.
Microsoft also released an Industry Reference Architecture for Banking in 2012.
Jennifer Warnick
Microsoft News Center Staff