According to Steven R. O'Hanlon, President and COO of Numerix, "Evolving derivatives regulations and unpredictable market conditions have fueled demand for more frequent, granular and portfolio-wide valuations and risk analytics. In order to process these calculations for thousands of financial instruments in near real-time, access to on-demand, scalable compute power has become a must-have in today's financial services and insurance firms."

Numerix currently offers its CrossAsset XL and Portfolio solutions powered by Windows Azure and Windows HPC Server. These solutions enable users to burst Excel calculations to the cloud and distribute them across a grid or a combination of both private and public cloud compute environments. This allows business agility, reduces capital expenditure, and quickly scales to meet the most compute intensive pricing and calculation demands. Numerix will build on this proven success and extend its use of Windows Azure to include Numerix Leading Hedge, an Asset and Liability Management solution for Variable Annuities and Equity Index Annuities, as well as forthcoming new releases of Numerix CrossAsset.

"Our alliance with Microsoft underscores our commitment to meet customer demand with Windows Azure-enabled solutions," O'Hanlon continued. "Our ability to burst pricing and risk calculations to Windows Azure is revolutionizing the ways firms can leverage the cloud to manage risk across their diverse portfolios. Looking ahead, cloud enablement will be integral to our new product development efforts."

"Industry partners like Numerix are essential to widespread adoption of Azure, as their solutions exemplify how traders, risk managers and life insurers can securely perform rapid and consistent risk calculations in the cloud," said Kim Akers, General Manager, Developer and Platform Evangelism, Microsoft. "We are pleased with Numerix's commitment to enable leading financial services and insurance firms to confidently tap the power ofof private, public and hybrid cloud computing."

"Providing business agility and lowering costs are essential in today's financial industry," said Karen Cone, General Manager, Worldwide Financial Services at Microsoft Corporation. "Numerix is a leader in providing analytics and risk management to the market, and we are excited that they are continuing their investment in Microsoft technology."

Earlier this year Microsoft recognized Numerix as ISV/Software Solutions Industry Partner of the Year for its success developing and implementing Microsoft-enabled software solutions for its customers.