Atkin Joins Outsell as Vice President

Michael Atkin joined Burlingame, Calif.-based market research and analysis firm Outsell as VP and lead analyst. He will lead a team of 10 analysts in the firm's financial information practice. "My task is to track, analyze and write about the trends and issues affecting the financial information industry from both the buyer perspective and the seller perspective," explains Atkin. "You can look at that in terms of market data - the pricing side of the equation - and reference data to cover the full spectrum of the information industry."

Atkin previously worked as the global facilitator and manager of the Financial Information Services Division of the Software and Information Industry Association. During his 20-year tenure, he was instrumental in the creation of market data definition language (MDDL) and helped define industry requirements for unique instrument identification. Additionally, he was a proponent of a number of standards initiatives.

"I've been a facilitator of dialogue within the industry for the last two decades. It gave me exposure to all the issues, all the players and how they evaluate things from their perspective," says Atkin. I've got a fairly unique view on the issues, trends and implications."