OpenLink/Maven Wave Partners Survey Found Technology Architecture and...

Open Link Financial, Inc. ("OpenLink"), a leading provider of cross-asset trading, risk management and operations processing software, today released the results of a survey conducted in conjunction with Maven Wave Partners, a strategy, process, and technology consulting solutions firm. The survey participants were senior operations professionals at investment firms involved in OTC derivatives valuations focused on valuations best practices, and how firms are trying to build transparency into their enterprise processes.

A majority of respondents (52%) indicated that the biggest hurdles to implementing valuations best practices were data and technology architecture. The breakdown of their responses to this issue was as follows:
    Technology Architecture (27.0%)    Data (24.3%)    Derivative Instrument/Product Complexity (21.6%)    Manual Operations (17.6%)    Regulatory Uncertainty (9.5%)

"The survey responses are congruent with what we are seeing in the industry. Firms are trying to adapt their management of both vanilla and exotic derivatives products in a market that is becoming increasingly regulated and complex," said Eric Gulbrandsen, Managing Director, Financial Services Practice, Maven Wave Partners. Mr. Gulbrandsen added that, “Firms are already implementing the known industry changes in the short-term, while actively interpreting and planning for the long-term changes.”

Other key findings highlighted the factors which were motivating firms to improve their valuations processes, with 45% stating compliance with industry best practices, 17% noted regulation, 26% said pressure from internal/external stakeholders, and 12% of respondents were driven in response to adverse events.

"These survey responses viewed together paint a picture of how firms must balance their appetite for more sophisticated and complex derivatives products, while managing the associated valuations and operational process challenges these trades present throughout the transaction lifecycle," said Ken Knowles, EVP, Financial and Risk Solutions, OpenLink. Mr. Knowles went on to comment, “Best practices for many firms will require a framework to manage multiple data sources for all aspects of their operations, trading and risk management, consolidated through a consistent enterprise technology vision.”

The survey was conducted at an OpenLink sponsored webinar entitled: Perspectives on OTC Derivatives Valuations Risks & Impacts. The webinar was designed for senior operations professionals at investment firms who were looking to understand the challenges around OTC derivatives valuations, including risks and impacts, and explored how firms can improve the valuations process and manage technology challenges to achieve more consistent pricing and reference data. To learn more about the webinar and OpenLink’s solutions for OTC derivatives valuations, please visit: http://www.olf.com.

About OpenLink

Founded in 1992, OpenLink is a provider of cross-asset trading, risk management, related operations processing and portfolio management software solutions for the commodity, energy and financial services markets globally.

OpenLink's client base of more than 350 customers worldwide includes 12 of the top 25 largest commodity and energy companies by market capitalization, eight of the largest financial institutions and 11 of the largest central banks, as well as major hedge funds, commodities companies and public utilities.

Headquartered on Long Island, New York and with offices in New York City, Houston, London, Berlin, Vienna, São Paulo, Sydney, Singapore, Moscow and Toronto, OpenLink has more than 900 employees worldwide.

Maven Wave Partners provides management consulting, technology leadership, and outsourcing services to companies seeking exceptional business advancement through transformation.

Creating and capitalizing on business change demands a Fusion-PoweredSM blend of strategic insight, management depth, and technology leadership. Our team has completed engagements for over 100 clients to produce over $1 billion in improved results across a range of industries.

Maven Wave’s Financial Services Practice provides full-service consulting to a wide range of retail and institutional financial firms. Our Financial Services Practice brings extensive consulting experience to firms in banking, consumer credit, insurance, asset management, investment banking, capital markets, hedge fund, proprietary trading and exchange markets. Maven Wave’s consultants are seasoned professionals with experience in leading complex and critical engagements for the world’s leading financial services firms.

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SEO Software from gShift Labs Chosen by Profit 100 Technology...

gShift Labs, creators of web-based Search Engine Optimization Software that enables a consistent and repeatable approach to optimizing the organic search results of an organization’s web presence, announced today that Nightingale, Doxim, and Tenzing, all companies listed on the Profit 100, have signed on as clients in order to improve their SEO results.

“Search engine optimization is a key part of a company’s business strategy,” said gShift’s Co-founder and CEO, Krista LaRiviere. “We have spent many years watching people do the heavy lifting of manually implementing SEO. Our software improves the process and enhances ROI for businesses. gShift Labs has developed and patented a new way to automate the SEO process that will dramatically improve the optimization effort in one easy-to-use software system.”

There are a variety of tactics and best practices that are used by SEO professionals to improve organic search results. They are time consuming, complicated and require tying together a number of publicly available tools. gShift’s SEO software is a system that pulls all tactics into one spot. Less time can be spent on “figuring out SEO” and more time can be spent on building the right content to deliver traffic to a web site. This is an important concept for any marketer who wants to demonstrate results for their clients or department.

“gShift Labs’ approach to tracking organic search rankings around specific keywords helps improve our SEO visibility and strategic planning in a very competitive market space,” said Scott Beardmore of Tenzing. “The tracking and optimization of social media content and news releases is fundamental to the traffic building goals of our corporate site. gShift's easy-to-follow SEO instructions allows our marketing department to build optimized content to improve our reach on the web. The software tells us what to do with our site, how to optimize our content and allows us to report on it every month to show our search engine rankings.”

gShift Labs is looking for marketing agencies and marketing executives that are frustrated with the level of effort required to support their current SEO strategy and want to simplify the process and achieve better organic search results for their web presence.

About gShift Labs
The founders of gShift Labs are SEO and marketing software veterans and recognize the tremendous importance that a web presence plays in today’s business strategy. gShift Labs’ SEO software, Web Presence OptimizerTM eliminates the complexity that surrounds search engine optimization techniques and strategies and standardizes it with a simple software tool that improves web rankings. gShift Labs’ software simplifies, demystifies and standardizes the way your website gets found on the internet to reduce the time and resource commitment necessary to perform, report, analyze and improve organic search optimization. Founded in 2009, gShift Labs is funded by the Investment Accelerator Fund.

For more information:
Contact Krista LaRiviere, CEO
krista(at)gshiftlabs(dot)com

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MIBAR.net Named a Technology Pacesetter by Accounting Today Magazine

MIBAR.net, a leading provider of software and IT services to growing and midsized businesses in the New York Metro Area, has been named a 2010 Technology Pacesetter by Accounting Today Magazine.

Accounting Today technology editor Seth Fineberg explained the selection process, “As the economy begins its recovery, today’s leading resellers and consultants of accounting technology have earned their place on our Technology Pacesetters list of top-flight accounting and ERP VARs not simply by selling the latest software, but by being able to offer essential – often new – services to their clients, and focusing more on key vertical markets.” A complete list of this year’s Technology Pacesetters can be found on Accounting Today Magazine's website.

MIBAR.net, a value added reseller of Microsoft Dynamics GP and CRM, as well as AccountMate SQL, has focused on delivering vertical solutions to a wide range of wholesale distributors, manufacturers, and retailers, including a specific concentration on the food and beverage industry and eCommerce technologies. This year also saw MIBAR.net successfully develop and launch their second, web-based, cloud offering, a paid time off tracking application built on Microsoft SharePoint, delivered under the “Software as a Service” or SaaS model.

Earlier this year, MIBAR.net won the Microsoft Dynamics Partner of the Year Award for the New York Metro Area, at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) in Washington DC. MIBAR.net was also named to the 2010 Accounting Today VAR 100, a list comprised of top accounting and ERP software resellers throughout the United States.

About MIBAR.net:
MIBAR.net is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and VAR based out of New York City and has been providing IT services and business management software solutions to growing and midsized businesses in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania for over 20 years. This past year, MIBAR.net welcomed Sabrett Hot Dogs, Strand Books, Anthony for Men, Gaspari Nutrition, Magnets.com, and Astra Foods as clients, among others.

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Consuro Managed Technology Adds Marketing Director

Fort Worth, TX (Vocus/PRWEB) December 13, 2010

Building on its success as one of North Texas’ premier Managed Service Providers, Consuro recently hired Tina Stovall as Marketing Director.

In her new role with Consuro, Stovall is charged with leading marketing efforts across a variety of platforms, including print, broadcast, and interactive. Stovall brings more than 15 years’ experience as an advertising professional to her new position. She began her career at TateAustin, an advertising and Public Relations firm in Austin, Texas. After moving to North Texas, she continued to hone her advertising skills at Temerlin McClain, one of the Southwest’s largest advertising agencies, where she produced award-winning print and broadcast work for such clients as Subaru of America, Nationwide Insurance, and Hollywood Theaters. More recently, Stovall received accolades for her work on Justin Boots, Alcon Laboratories and the Boys and Girls Clubs of Fort Worth.

“Building the Consuro brand is a high priority for us. With Tina’s help, we can focus on that objective and increase our business through more targeted marketing efforts,” said Kevin Valadez, Co-President of Consuro.

Consuro is a premier managed service provider offering comprehensive Windows-based IT services including desktop management, server and network management, offsite management, data center solutions, consulting and project management, and asset procurement. Its broad scope of services delivers advanced technological capabilities to businesses of any size. Consuro was founded in 2008 and has offices in San Angelo and Fort Worth, Texas.

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Translia Enhances Copyright Protection with SafeTrans Technology

New York, NY (Vocus/PRWEB) December 13, 2010

Translia, an online company providing professional translation to and from 98 languages, recently began utilizing SafeTrans technology to protect source files from being illicitly copied by translators. Translia operates with over ten thousand translators registered online, and is currently one of the most successful global translation businesses in the world. SafeTrans works by preventing translators from gaining direct access to any source documents, and instead "feeding" the documents to translators one sentence at a time. This makes it much more difficult for translators to copy large, sensitive documents.

A non-disclosure agreement is, of course, standard in the document translation business, but this relies on the honesty of the translator. Translia maintains that it only hires translators who conform to the highest standards of professionalism, and that the SafeTrans technology is merely another layer of security designed to help clients feel that their content is in safe hands. Thousands of articles, exchanges, documents and other copyrighted pieces of content pass through Translia every day, and much of that content has not yet been published in any language. For this reason, many clients are wary of translators receiving full access to their writing. SafeTrans helps to mitigate that wariness.

SafeTrans technology separates translators from the actual document files that clients upload to Translia's servers. The whole process is automated, so translators only engage with their employer's SafeTrans system. The system looks at each document and divides it into sentences according to where periods are placed. Each sentence is given to the translator working with the document at a time, and once the translator submits a finished translation, the sentence is saved and the translator is guided to the next sentence. Once the translation project is completed, all of the sentences from all of the translators are compiled in the same order that they were in the original document.

Translia is, of course, quick to point out that in addition to technologies like SafeTrans, it uses traditional means of copyright protection as well. All their online translators must sign a non-disclosure agreement with the translation company, which provides legal protection for clients' copyrights for many years after the translator works on any given project. Any translator who violates the non-disclosure agreement and steals copyright information will not only be terminated from membership, but will also be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Non-disclosure agreements, though not perfect for translation companies, have long served as the first line of defense for businesses and creators of content seeking to protect their copyright privileges.

SafeTrans is a major advancement in the field of translation copyright protection. In an increasingly globalized world, multilingual translation has become necessary for many individuals and businesses. The additional level of security provided by SafeTrans is expected to convince many holders of sensitive or copyrighted material to use professional online translation services to disseminate their content in multiple languages worldwide.

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