Kapiti Ltd, the Slough, Berkshire-based banking and trading room systems software house has caught the client-server bug. It has announced a new banking systems architecture, Meridian, which distributes applications across multiple servers while still retaining its wholesale banking and treasury product Equation/3 on the AS/400. Equation/3 will still remain the core of the Meridian architecture, says Kapiti, as it is the lynchpin around which treasury operations, corporate banking and retail banking systems are built. But the company is now developing a client-server communications control system to act as middleware between Equation/3 and applications resident on departmental servers. One such application is Trade Innovation, Kapiti’s financial trading system, which is the first of its offerings to go client-server. Kapiti is currently testing the letters of credit module within Trade Innovation and will then roll out the whole package by the end of the year. This is likely to be followed by a client-server Derivatives processing package and a Branch Automation System designed to act as branch server for retail banking applications. All future products will be written using our Enigma C++ tool kit to ensure they are operating system-independent and fit within the Meridian architecture, said John Graham, product group director. Graham says all Kapiti’s major products will be carried forward within this architecture even though some overlap with those of rival banking systems house ACT Group Plc, which is to be bought by Kapiti’s parent company, Misys Group Plc. He does admit that we may have to come up with an overarching product strategy.
