With SIBOS 2006 in Sydney looming, and the SIBOS Standards Forum featuring on the SIBOS program on Wednesday 11th and Thursday 12th October, the stage is set for this forum to update the industry on the current activities, plans and thoughts around Standards, and to explore the diplomatic positioning of what should be convergent Standardisation initiatives.

C24s role is that of an implementation specialist in messaging data services who sits between the various Standards bodies and the consumers and implementers of these standards. The C24 Standards Factory focuses on the provision and maintenance of Standards Support Packs, while C24 development focuses on provision of the open technology to support management and implementations of these standards on any technology infrastructure. As such the C24 standards releases tracks mandatory standard updates such as the usual SWIFT FIN updates, and also real world adopter demand for standards such as SWIFTNet Funds, FpML, ISO 20022 and TWIST.

The following is a summary of current C24 Standards release news:

SWIFT FIN Standards Release 2006 for November 2006: C24 have released the "SWIFT Standards Release 2006" in support of the November 2006 SWIFT FIN service updates to add to the existing 2002, 2003 and 2005 Standards Releases. The C24 IO SWIFT FIN Support Packs include all system, common group, and all message category message types along with full network validation rule implementations and in excess of 12,000 test messages. Available options include "plug and play" run-time packages that can convert of any SWIFT FIN message to and from XML, include full XML Schema for the FIN message types, and the full design-time source data models for information architects. With this SR2006 release C24 continues to extend it's lead in providing the premier open technology implementation of SWIFT FIN standards for the industry.

SWIFTNet Funds Support Pack: The C24 IO SWIFTNet Funds Support Pack includes fully supported ISO 20022/UNIFI message payloads within the SWIFTNet message envelopes that make up the SWIFTNet Funds MX message sets for participants in the investment funds market. It provides the messaging data services for standardisation of automated business flows for account openings and maintenance, orders, statuses or cancellations of orders and order confirmations, transfers, holdings and transaction statements, reporting on price, cash flow, commissions, and prospectus static data.

The C24 IO SWIFTNet Funds Support Pack includes full implementations of the published message models and the semantic constraint rules, includes instance test data for each message set, thus ensuring messages are syntactically and semantically valid based on the Standards as implemented over SWIFTNet. Overall it provides a high confidence, fully supported SWIFTNet Funds messaging data services solution that enables firms and software vendors to quickly implement and maintain integration solutions.

ISO 20022 / UNIFI: The ISO 20022/UNIFI standards continue to evolve and gain adopter traction, and the C24 Standards Factory continues to be actively involved in implementations and feedback to the associated ISO working groups. The current C24 ISO 20022/UNIFI Support Pack includes the "Exceptions and Investigations"," Investment Funds Distribution", "Payments Clearing and Settlement", and all valid "Payments Initiation" message sets.

The FpML 4.2 Trial Recommendation 2006-05-08 has been added to the C24 IO FpML Support Pack. This takes the total of FpML standards releases implemented and supported within the C24 IO FpML Support Pack to 33. Each release is packaged with extensive test data and full implementations of the FpML validation rules as defined by the FpML Validation Working Group, chaired by Simon Heinrich, Product Development Director at C24. Demand for FpML messaging data services continues to increase as a key component of the drive to increased efficiency in the automated processing of OTC Derivative instruments. FpML is commonly wrapped by firms within internal canonical models, and is a technically advanced standard with ongoing feedback into technical implementations the other standards initiatives.

TWIST - June 2006 Standards Release is now supported ensuring that the C24 IO TWIST Support Pack is fully up to date with the latest version of the standard. C24 continues to be actively involved with firms in the corporate financial supply chain implementing these standards, and with the participants in the TWIST technical committee.

Adding support for Open Technology Specifications - Interactive Financial eXchange (IFX), Open Financial Exchange (OFX), and eInvoice standards: C24 IO can be used to model and generate associated Java bean classes for any XML or non-XML data structure. The C24 IO Open Edition is commonly used for assorted custom models and open standards. In recognition of some of the more common usages contexts, C24 now fully tests against, and includes bundled data models for the Open Technology Specifications IFX, OFX and e2b eInvoicing Standards.