The London arm of Hewlett-Packard Ltd has released details of its future strategy for involvement in the financial services sector, and opened its Financial Demonstration Centre, designed to demonstrate different kinds of kit on a permanent system. Richard Shaw, European marketing manager in financial services, declared Hewlett-Packard’s intention to target investment banking, retail networking and insurance for 1990, with the company already forming agreements with third party software vendors such as Reuters, Sapphire Spottiswoode and Financial Solutions Ltd in connection with this stated goal. Shaw claimed that the emergence of Unix as a standard in this field could only work in Hewlett’s favour, given its position as largest Unix systems supplier worldwide – particularly after the Apollo acquisition. In the increasingly cut-throat financial services sector, the way ahead for financial organisations would almost definitely be through technology. Guest speaker Paull Robathan, managing director of the Infact Ltd information technology consultancy, took up this last point more specifically in the context of the dealing room environment by saying that the frequent gulf between the front office and the back office of trading institutions was to a great extent created by technology – and it was now up to technology to put that right. Absolutely essential for any trader, he continued, is a close link between the front office, where the trading itself goes on, and the back office, which supports the frontline with the calculation, confirmation and return of information – without this, proper risk management is impossible. The workstations that began to emerge in trading rooms around 1983 were incapable of relating to the back office or indeed anywhere else, but now, with a system comprising a workstation with a powerful processor, local nets, various applications and the possibility of easy development of the system, the gulf created by technology could now be resolved, so that the trading room is brought into contact not only with the back office, but with every workstation in the organisation. He followed with a cautious endorsement of the Hewlett strategy, as displayed by the Financial Demonstration Centre. The centre is a mock dealing room using Unix-based technology, comprising two complete dealing desks with a number of Vectra personal computers, two HP9000 Series 300 Unix workstations and an Apollo DN4500; this is linked to two HP9000 800 minicomputers in a back office environment by Ethernet. Software development tools such as Teamwork are present, as are general tools like X Window, NewWave and MS-DOS emulations. There is a number of financial services applications available for demonstration, with the overall aim being to enable clients to pinpoint potential problems before a system is installed. This system, Hewlett-Packard believes, has met the industry standard with a flexible, integrated solution: returning to Paull Robathan, this commitment to establishing a standard, he argues, is the responsible way for suppliers to address the financial services market.
