Back office systems vendor Rolfe & Nolan has secured the backing of UBS Warburg, Royal Bank of Scotland and two other unnamed banks in a collaborative project intended to take advantage of component and Web-based technologies.
The project - codenamed 'Project Merlin' - will aim to replace Rolfe & Nolan's existing products with a functionally superior suite of platform-independent components. The components should be rapidly integrated into existing processing environments, while at the same time setting out a new workflow and data architecture for the future. The vendor has secured funding from existing customers for the R&D effort.
Rolfe & Nolan made passing reference to the Merlin project when it recently delivered its year-end results for 2000, but did not identify the customers who were supporting the initiative.
"This is not a big bang approach," comments John Lodge, Rolfe & Nolan's chief executive, "But a steady rollout of new technology which adds value at each stage. The resulting systems will offer our clients greatly improved transaction processing efficiencies, and even better control of the business."
The vendor expects the development to open up new markets. "There's a whole new audience of market participants becoming involved in exchange trading." says Geoff Maskell, Rolfe & Nolan's sales and services director. "Whether it's energy, single stock futures or new types of exchange trading on the Internet, there's an underlying need for efficient, secure transaction processing."