Microsoft Releases Financial Services OBA Component Library, Giving Firms a Head Start in Creating Applications Built on the 2007 Microsoft Office System

NEW YORK — March 12, 2008 — Helping financial services firms solve real-world problems in the areas of interoperability, extending legacy systems and creating compelling user interfaces, Microsoft Corp. today released the Financial Services Office Business Applications (OBA) Component Library at the sixth annual Microsoft Financial Services Developer Conference.

Microsoft OBAs are composite applications built upon the 2007 Microsoft Office system, utilizing the familiar and easy-to-use interfaces of Microsoft Office products and connecting to additional Microsoft technologies (such as Microsoft SQL Server or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server) or other back-office systems. The resulting solution is built to model how people work within financial services firms day-to-day, integrating with existing workflows, reducing training efforts and trimming development time.

“Financial services firms are seeking to leverage information technology to respond to volatile and evolving market conditions, while at the same time making investments that integrate into the way people actually work,” said Mike Walker, architecture strategist for the Worldwide Financial Services Group at Microsoft. “The OBA Component Library gives firms a head start toward developing solutions by providing real-world scenarios that illustrate how new business applications can be built, and existing systems improved, using Microsoft Office technologies to overcome common challenges.”

The Financial Services OBA Component Library consists of more than 90 components that serve as common financial methodologies and standard Web service protocols. Using the structure of a composite design, developers, partners and financial services firms are able to assemble OBA components into existing or new custom solutions built on Microsoft application platform technologies, including Microsoft Office SharePoint Server — reducing development costs and augmenting existing service-oriented architecture initiatives through interoperability.

Divided into scenarios for the banking, insurance and capital markets industries, the Financial Services OBA Component Library provides interoperability through Web services and industry standards, such as the Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development (ACORD), Financial Information eXchange (FIX) and Interactive Financial eXchange (IFX), to illustrate the following:

  • Banking: lending reference architecture, common online banking components for consumer portals and broker commission scenarios

  • Insurance: claims processing, channel sales, and life and annuity scenarios leveraging Microsoft Silverlight and SharePoint Server for a rich user interface

  • Capital markets: structured product scenarios utilizing Office Open XML

A complete technical overview, white papers, installable code and other free resources from the Financial Services OBA Component Library are available through the Microsoft Financial Services architecture portal, http://msdn.microsoft.com/FinServArch.

About Microsoft in Financial Services

Microsoft’s Financial Services group helps financial firms leverage technology to amplify the impact their people can deliver to drive business success. We help our customers in banking, capital markets/securities, and insurance achieve four business outcomes: develop relationships, drive innovation, improve operations and build connections. To do this, we focus our products and technologies, and our work with leading solutions, services and hardware partners, on key areas where we believe we and our partners can deliver exceptional value; those areas include advisor platforms, channel renewal, core banking, insurance value chain, investment management, risk management and compliance, and payments. More information can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/financialservices.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

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