INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGY BRIEFS

SunGard Investment Management Systems, an operating group of SunGard, announced the successful completion of a Web-browser interface to the PAL Service. ePAL will provide private-client administration services to stockbrokers and fund managers in the U.K. Designed as a replacement for the GUI front-end, the new technology can runalongside the existing interfaces, giving the user a choice as to how to access the PAL Service. The new ePAL Service can be accessed from any PC connected to the Internet. Users can navigate by following hyperlinks presented on screen; switching between menus and programs is a point-and-click procedure, and paging backwards and forwards from one screen to the next is replaced by a scrollbar so all data is viewed concurrently.

Information Systems, Inc., a provider of portfolio management and investment-accounting solutions, announced that the County of Maui, State of Hawaii has selected eQED the Web-based version of IMS-2000 to manage $100 million in fixed-income investments, most of which is externally managed. QED Information Systems, Inc. is a provider of portfolio management and investment-accounting systems and ASP services to institutional-investment organizations. QED's product suite provides straight-through processing, front-to-back office functionality that is available for on-site installation or accessible via the Internet.

x.eye incorporated, a provider of Client-centric Wealth Management software announced the successful completion of scalability testing for the company's flagship product, x.eye.wealth.manager. Scalability testing determined that x.eye.wealth.manager can process more than one million financial transactions per hour, run more than 7,500 reports per hour and support more than 20,000 users with 50 percent concurrency, making it a possible solution for wealth-management firms with 100 or 50,000 users.

Spectra Securities Software, a provider of wealth-management software solutions to the financial-services industry, and AnnuityNet, a company focused on the automation of annuity processing, announced that the two companies have formalized a strategic alliance to provide comprehensive order-management processing capabilities to banks, brokerages, insurance companies and financial planners. Spectra's integration with AnnuityNet's annuity processing technology will provide an integrated Web-based order-management module that includes equities, fixed income, mutual funds, WRAP and annuities.

INDATA, a provider of enterprise software solutions for investment-management firms, announced that it has signed an agreement to develop an interface with Liquidnet, an alternative-trading system exclusively for buy-side institutions, for INDATA Precision Trading system clients. The addition of the Liquidnet interface to Precision Trading will provide INDATA clients -- that trade large blocks of stock -- with another connectivity option to gain additional liquidity outside of traditional markets, in addition to a reduction in transaction costs. Precision Trading is a "best of breed" trade-order-management system that provides order generation and allocation, portfolio modeling, pre-trade compliance, and electronic-trading capabilities through the FIX protocol.