Gissing Tool SpeedsData to Excel

LONDON-Gissing Software, a U.K. provider of feed handlers and market data software, is introducing this week a RealtimeXL upgrade that incorporates a faster data distribution mechanism that should help traders with their Microsoft Excel spreadsheets.

Many Excel spreadsheets still use Microsoft's legacy Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE), which distributes data between applications. However, since the debut of Excel 2002, Microsoft has been pushing a real-time data (RTD) server as a replacement for DDE because RTD is better at handling ever-changing data feeds such as stock quotes and currency exchange rates.

The RTD capability is key to the RealtimeXL upgrade, which allows clients to manipulate and view real-time prices in Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and customized applications, say Gissing Software officials. Gissing Software debuted the real-time analysis tool at the DWT New York conference and exhibition a year ago (DWT, March 14, 2005).

"What we have added is the ability to import Dynamic Data Exchange, allowing clients to convert their legacy Microsoft DDE links to Microsoft's Real-Time Data technology," says Nick Braybrooke, product manager for Gissing RealtimeXL. "DDE is not an efficient environment in a market data world, and so we are enabling users to go straight to the latest Microsoft-supported standard, which is RTD," Braybrooke says.

Braybrooke says Gissing's clients want to move off unsupported DDE environments such as Tibco Software's TIBlink and Reuters Personal Data Dictionary. "Gissing is providing them with a conduit from where they were to where they want to be," Braybrooke says. "It is a form of moving away from a legacy environment. Other vendors haven't really approached this subject, so we decided to look at it and provide a solution."

Braybrooke says that the update is available across the three flavors of RealtimeXL: RealtimeXL View for subscription to a single data source; RealtimeXL Professional for subscription to multiple data sources; and RealtimeXL Plus, which is Professional plus a library of analytic tools. RealtimeXL, version 2.0, will be available in mid-March on a global basis.

"It will be deployable across all our clients. It is location-independent, as it's a technology rather than a local issue," Braybrooke says. "We are expecting to attract new clients because there is so much DDE still out there."

Since Microsoft stated its intention to use RTD rather than DDE, "there hasn't been any product on the market allowing clients to go from one to the other, so we decided to do this as we are very close to Microsoft and we are a Microsoft-certified partner," Braybrooke says. Microsoft does not offer a comparable offering to Gissing's new converter, he says. "Gissing has actually been working with Microsoft on this for the last 18 months to two years," he adds.

Microsoft officials were not available for comment by press time.

Existing clients will be automatically upgraded. "We are not charging specifically for this feature," Braybrooke says. "We have people evaluating it and we have three clients who are looking to use this to migrate away from DDE," he says. Braybrooke declines to name the firms.

Gissing Software's customers include the London branch of the Moscow Narodny Bank (DWT, Nov. 7, 2005); WestLB in Germany, (DWT, Dec. 6, 2004); GFI Group Inc., (Trading Technology Week, April 5, 2004); and JPMorgan Chase in London (TTW, Dec. 2, 2002).

RealtimeXL provides links to mar ket data distribution platforms such as Reu ters Triarch, Tibco Rendez vous (TIB/RV), the Reuters Market Data System (RMDS), Bloomberg and Gis sing's ConteX MCS. RealtimeXL supports Microsoft Excel 2000 (non-RTD) as well as Excel XP and 2003 with support for RTD.