Linedata Services takes ASP route with LongView

PARIS – Linedata Services, the Paris-based buy-side vendor, has unveiled the ASP version of LongView, the firm's front-office fund management platform. According to Simon Harwood, European product manager for LongView Trading and Linedata Compliance, the ASP model is not a new initiative for Linedata – it is a model the vendor has used for some time to deliver primarily investment accounting systems to organisations on the Continent and in the UK.

"But even if we didn't (have an existing ASP offering), there is the view that the ASP model is attractive in terms of cost, time to market and not requiring large scale implementations and IT resources," Harwood says. "The way the market is, is that even smaller buy-side firms need increasingly sophisticated solutions to compete in their own market and I believe the ASP model is not just applicable to small and medium-sized players."

According to Harwood, LongView's ASP iteration has already garnered significant buy-side support with a number of new signings – consisting of a mix of traditional asset managers and hedge funds.

"We have six clients live with 15 signed to the service, and that is excluding existing clients using the ASP as part of our alliance with UBS Hedge Fund Services," Harwood confirms. "We have a mix of clients using the systems for long-only, long-short, fixed income, equities and derivatives, and portfolio management and trading. Any which way you can slice and dice the front office, we've got that blend already up and running," he says.

Linedata acquired hedge fund specialist Beauchamp Financial, late last year, shortly after announcing the acquisition of GIS.