ABN Amro in North America has launched a new company - Neogration - to market its inhouse-developed suite of XML-based middleware for integrating legacy systems and to offer outsourcing solutions for payments, accounting and other financial administration processes.
The Dutch bank will maintain an equity position and be a strategic partner with Neogration. Initial funding is provided by BlueStar Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm based in Chicago.
Neogration brings to market solutions first developed to integrate disparate applications resulting from ABN Amro North America's acquisitions. The bank says Neogration's solutions provide an open XML environment and can save up to 75 percent of the time and cost of traditional interfaces. This is because the adapters include a top layer of standard processes for message transport and formatting, leaving developers free to concentrate on underlying business logic.
"Neogration will bring to market not only this platform, but many other ROI-justified, end-to-end business process solutions developed by ABN Amro North America," says Louis Rosenthal, executive vice president at the bank's North American operation, and Neogration's chairman of the board.
The new company is presided over by Michael Qualley, most recently vice president of technology, professional services and operations, for Commerx, a Chicago-based provider of private trading networks. Prior to this he was vice president of e-commerce solutions at ABN Amro North America, responsible for the development and support of its vertical Internet applications division.
Neogration's chief technology officer is Matthias Autrata, an ABN Amro executive who led the development of the integration platform technology Neogration now provides. In addition, Autrata was responsible for the creation of an integrated IT platform to support the bank's mortgage lending operations. Autrata also led the roll out of Mortgage.com, the bank's online retail mortgage lending channel.