Wall Street & Technology: Blog

TrendPoint Offers Suggestions for Greener Data Centers

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 12:02:05 -0500

Data center energy management company TrendPoint Systems is offering a four-point plan for �green data centers�. Although the plan leads into a pitch for TrendPoint's product, it includes some helpful hints for those who find their data centers to be energy hogs.

Adobe, GemStone to Speed Global Workflows, Document Sharing

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 16:27:09 -0500

As Wall Street firms continue to open new offices in foreign countries and to outsource around the globe, one challenge for IT departments is to make sure that work, data and documents flow quickly and smoothly among widespread offices and data centers. Adobe and GemStone are announcing today a joint solution designed to meet this challenge: they�ve embedded GemStone�s GemFire data virtualization software, which harnesses the memory resources of many computers to speed up data retrieval and improve scalability and fault tolerance, into a version of Adobe�s LiveCycle workflow and document management software.

Do�s and Don�ts of Setting Up an Asset Management Business in Japan

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 14:18:44 -0500

Watching the Olympic diving competition last night and seeing how after every dive the Chinese athletes humbly bow, making a simple, graceful gesture foreign to most Americans, reminded me of how much we could learn and benefit from other countries' customs and practices. Such an attitude is critical to doing business in Asian countries, according to Roger White, managing director of IT consulting firm Citisoft. White recently completed a six-year stint in Tokyo, where he helped U.S. firms expand their asset management businesses in Japan (while working for PriceWaterhouseCoopers). When he first arrived, �I found everything was different � I had to check everything I knew at the door and learn to do things differently.� He observed that the U.S. firms that took a softer approach to implementing new practices, first trying to develop a deep understanding of existing processes and customs before introducing changes, fared far better than those that slammed their American ways on Japanese employees. Also, White found that demonstrating a new process in front of local employees and proving before their eyes that it worked before making them do it, helped them accept it.

TGIF: The Price of Safety

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 14:23:59 -0500

To help you mentally prepare for vacation, here's an in-flight safety video from Mad TV:

ClearCube Rolls Out One-to-Many Virtual Desktop for Non-Power Users

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 16:51:08 -0500

For �task� or �knowledge� users who do ordinary things with their desktop computers such as word processing, spreadsheets, email and web browsing, ClearCube is announcing this morning a virtual desktop solution that feeds multiple desktops � as many as eighty -- from one PC blade. In theory, this could save money and IT support time in the running of Wall Street's office PCs.

Will the PC of the Future Be Shared?

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 10:18:33 -0500

In a recent conversation with Jacob Hall, chief architect for the investment bank at Wachovia, he brought up an interesting idea he�s been thinking about: deploying desktop computers like workgroup printers. �Rather than virtualizing desktop computers and moving them to the data centers, where we already have expansion problems as most companies do, we deploy desktops where they are today, but we just deploy fewer of them,� he says. �We think a new type of workgroup computer needs to be created that can take advantage of this.� Each workgroup computer would serve twenty to forty people, he estimates.

TGIF: Do Your Budget Meetings Look Like This?

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 06:54:13 -0500

A tough-talking Rainn Wilson, aka Dwight Shrute from The Office, leads a meeting on budget cuts and gets ideas from a diverse group of employees in this SNL Digital Short.

Wealth Managers Grade Themselves Poorly on Process

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 17:22:08 -0500

Software company Northstar recently polled 5,500 wealth managers and found that on a scale of 0 to 80, the average wealth manager scored his firm a 32 in ability to offer best-in-class, holistic and personalized service.

Bloomberg/Reuters Rival Preparing U.S. Launch of Mobile Apps

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 14:15:07 -0500

On September 1, London-based Blue Systems will stage a U.S. launch of two new low-cost ($10 and $20 per month) global news applications for professional traders to use on their mobile devices. The blue mobile applications are designed to deliver worldwide news to the traders ahead of traditional internet and TV new vehicles such as cnbc and more cheaply than Bloomberg or Reuters desktop applications, over Blackberry, Windows Mobile and Symbian devices. The products will target traders who need to know what�s happening in the markets when they�re away from their offices, after markets have shut down in the evening or in the morning before they open.

Most Fund Administrators Worried About Backoffice Errors, Study Finds

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 16:55:11 -0500

Eighty-four percent of senior managers at fund companies and fund administrators are concerned that manual processes are affecting their ability to control errors, according to a study released today by software company Confluence. The survey had 115 respondents, 40% of them C-level executives.

The Dark Side of Google SMS

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 07:04:47 -0500

A sketch comedy group called The Vacationeers has created a series of videos about Google extras. In this fourth episode of The Googling, Google SMS, a young man uses text messaging and gets more than movie times:

State of the Reuters-Thomson Union

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 17:37:06 -0500

Like a wartime marriage, the merger of Thomson and Reuters 90 days ago occurred in the harshest of market conditions � the subprime mess quickly led to losses and layoffs among the companies� largest customers � and the merged entity appears to be feeling the strain. Thomson Reuter�s stock price has dropped in the last few weeks due to worries that its business will be affected by the Wall Street job cuts.

NYC Brokerage Revels in the Joys of Paperlessness

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:19:51 -0500

One of the ironies of office life is that often, the more tasks are automated, the more paper documents abound -- software that's supposed to obviate the need for paper documents tends to end up generating even more paper than before. But New York City-based retail and institutional brokerage Bishop Rosen is going truly paper-free this summer, by scanning and digitizing all printed documents, and users are relishing the freedom from paper.

NYSE is Refining its Data Services

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:22:04 -0500

Since 2001, the New York Stock Exchange has been using an analytics engine called 1010data Tenbase to quicklybuild new analytics tools for its customers. Today, the two firms announced that the NYSE has been using new features that 1010data is just now making generally available. The new features include multi-aggregation tools, time-series analysis, click-stream analysis and extract, transform and load. The 1010data platform lets the NYSE give its subscribers access to the exchange's mammoth archives and query multiple data sets through a simple web browser.

Reader Offers Data Center Energy Use Tips

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 22:28:04 -0500

After we ran a blog last week on the Accenture Data Center energy usage study, a knowledgable reader wrote in to share his own advice on reducing energy consumption, as follows.