16 November 2004
Aegis Software and B2BITS Complete Fixed Income Certification Suite Set to be first vendors to offer official, cross-certified FPL service
New York, November 16, 2004 - Today at the FPL Americas Conference in New York City , Aegis Software and B2BITS announced they are the first two vendors to complete cross-certification of the entire Fixed Income Certification Suite, as specified by FPL (FIX Protocol Limited) guidelines, and have submitted their results to FPL for review. Subject to FPL verification of the log files, the two vendors will be allowed to make their respective services available to companies seeking official FPL certification. The Certification Suite service will be available over the internet from each company website: www.b2bits.com.
The Fixed Income Certification Suite is a series of test cases and test scripts designed to validate the trading of fixed income securities using the FIX 4.4 protocol. The scripts cover the complete life-cycle of the pre-trade, trade and post-trade processes. Both buy-side and sell-side versions of the scripts are provided, covering the following Fixed Income products: US Treasuries, Agencies and Corporate Bonds. As mandated by FPL, Aegis and B2BITS have cross-certified their offerings and have submitted the results for verification by Brook Path Partners, the consulting services firm that developed the fixed-income certification test scripts for FPL.
"We are very pleased with the result," said Norm Friedman, vice president at Aegis Software. "Of course there were some inconsistencies and issues to be ironed out, but given the fact that we were working across three organizations (Aegis, B2BITS and Brook Path), the process was relatively smooth. We strongly believe that the resultant services offered by Aegis and B2Bits will be very valuable to the industry, and it also bodes well for the future. Going forward, FPL-sanctioned certification efforts for, say, session level FIX, equities or foreign exchange will be much easier, given our experiences. Aegis will continue to participate in these very beneficial industry-wide efforts".
"We have always been a proponent of supporting the FIX protocol with such a reference implementation," said vice president of B2BITS, Alexander Mologoko. "The development and cross certification processes were non-trivial and both intensive and iterative. Our close cooperation with Aegis and FPL has ensured a uniform interpretation of the protocol and solidity within the certification platforms themselves. Certification will result in reduced implementation times and a quicker adoption of the protocol within the Fixed Income trading community. We intend to remain very active in supporting the evolution of FIX, and have accelerated this with the launch of our FIX-based trading platform for treasuries and corporates".
About Aegis Software Inc.
Aegis Software is an innovative provider of trading and testing solutions for the global financial marketplace. Aegis' solutions include: the FCS certification product, which is being used by Aegis to implement the FPL scripts; Exchange Simulator and Client Simulator, for functional and performance testing of order management systems; FIX and CMS gateway products; and an algorithmic trading engine called AthenaTrader. Headquartered in New York City , Aegis is renowned for robust, reliable and high performance trading products and Aegis' solutions are employed globally by several major banks & brokerages.
About B2BITS
With offices in London and New York, B2BITS deploys its FIX
solutions worldwide. B2BITS has aggressively sought to lower the
barriers of FIX implementations for all market participants by
providing FIX Engines with world-leading performance on entry level
hardware across a range of operating systems, and by the
development of automated testing tools and diagnostics. B2BITS also
offers robust FIX certification services. PINKTM, with Direct
Market Access, is a highly cost-effective alternative for corporate
and government bond traders and funds.
www.b2bits.com