Cambridge Technology and Level 8 Join Forces

Cambridge Technology Partners Inc. a management consulting and systems integration firm, and Level 8 Systems, a provider of rapid business integration solutions, are collaborating to develop a software application that enables Nasdaq member securities trading firms to comply with new electronic reporting requirements established by Nasdaq's regulatory board, NASDR.

Cambridge signed a collaborative development and OEM partnership agreement with Level 8 Systems after selecting Level 8's Geneva Integrator technology as a key architectural component of its new securities trading electronic reporting application. The application, which will be marketed by Cambridge Technology Partners as OatsTalk for Securities Broker Dealer Compliance, interfaces directly with NASDR's recently established Order Audit Trail System (OATS), which monitors trading compliance.

Under the terms of Cambridge's agreement with Level 8, Level 8 committed to supply its Geneva Integrator technology and to provide engineering resources to assist Cambridge in developing the application. Geneva Integrator will be an embedded component of the OatsTalk system which will allow OatsTalk to interact with both the OATS system at NASDR and a wide variety of existing trade processing and financial reporting systems at NASDAQ client firms.

"Complying with NASDR's new electronic reporting requirements is not an option for NASDAQ member firms, and they have only a limited amount of time in which to prepare," observes Joseph Mathai, Industry Managing Partner for Cambridge Technology Partners. "After an extensive evaluation, we selected Geneva Integrator because of its ability to interact with a flexibility and extensibility we required to deliver a comprehensive solution."

Robertson Stephens integrated OatsTalk with order events from its proprietary order management system- ETS, and its trading system - BRASS. The order events from the two systems were combined to produce OATS files for submission via OatsTalk.

In just eight weeks, Robertson Stephens became OATS-compliant for NASDR and as a result, were the first company to report transactions in accordance with the new laws. OatsTalk provides the firm with a central repository of all orders and order events and is connected to Robertson Stephens' Equity

Trading System. With this information readily available, Robertson Stephens is able to quickly and accurately respond to NASDR regulatory inquiries and customer complaints.

The OatsTalk system is an infrastructure designed to handle the electronic collection and delivery of securities trading information. The OatsTalk system will gather order events data from a NASDAQ member firm's existing legacy systems that handle its trade processing. Its Web-based user interface captures order events with time stamps approved by the NASDR.

The OatsTalk system then performs the necessary processing, transformation, logging and packaging operations necessary to deliver these electronically to the OATS compliance tracking system at NASDR. In addition, OatsTalk will include a report generator for the creation of order audit trail submissions, and provide interactive administration and monitoring of operational status.

The OatsTalk system combines Level 8's Geneva Integrator with software modules custom-developed by Cambridge. Geneva Integrator controls the processing and transformation of messages between OatsTalk and other financial trading applications, ensuring message delivery and the integrity of transactional processing flows, which are crucial in the financial services industry. OatsTalk will be fully compliant with Microsoft's BizTalk/WinDNAfs architecture.

For more information on Cambridge, visit www.ctp.com. Level 8 information can be found on the Web at www.level8.com.

Must Read Articles