Pivot Debuts Collaboration Platform

"We're not taking the company in a different direction, but this is a pretty big expansion of the scope of what we offer," says Lou Eccleston, chairman and CEO of Pivot Solutions.

Users will have the ability to automate current internal and external workflows via Pivot 360's IM-based platform, say officials.

"It breaks down the barriers of what is being talked about, whether it's content or data," explains Edward Daciuk, vice president of product with Pivot. "We started the conversation around order entry, but Pivot 360 is about integrating the conversation with different research databases and algorithmic alert engines." he adds.

"For example, if a firm has its research stored in Doctumentum, during a real-time conversation we can trigger that research by some filter, word or symbol," says Eccleston. "They can click on it and open that research in third-party analytics," he says.

"It's also about integrating a market feed, research databases, indications-of-interest and liquidity," adds Daciuk.

The platform is a hybrid mix of C++ and Java, says Daciuk. "The C++ development tools are more advanced, but Java lends itself more on the server side to be componentized and linked to other applications," he adds.

Central to the platform is its use of structured messaging and its ability to tag unstructured content, says Daciuk. "Our proprietary technology is good at tagging conversations, documents and inbound information and using that to integrate and filter on the buy side or broadcast it on the sell side and make the process more efficient," he adds.

However, Pivot plans to pre-integrate several industry standard tagging conventions into the platform, says Daciuk. "FIX is just a tagging scheme and RIXML for research is just a tagging scheme."

"It may be an over-simplification, but we can add an asset class by adding a syntax table," says Eccleston.

The growth of IM in the capital markets cannot be understated, says Eccleston, pointing to industry bodies, such as the Financial Instant Messaging Association (FIMA), that have been established to promote the IM solutions that meet the financial services industry's requirements.

The drive to do business via IM has been increasing, as firms such as Moors and Cabot, a retail and wholesale brokerage based in Boston, accepted approximately 40 percent of order flow via FIX and the IM system, IMTrader from Pivot Solutions. Clients preferred to use IM to communicate their trading needs, firm officials said at the time (DWT, Dec. 5, 2005).