Odyssey Financial Technologies can now take advantage of IBM's marketing and technical expertise to develop and deliver solutions that meet customer requirements in the financial services industry.

Odyssey's solutions are unique in the wealth and asset management technology industry as its components can be deployed on a single scalable platform in many combinations to address the challenges and business goals of leading global companies and regional financial institutions.

Enabling Odyssey's Portfolio including Relationship Manager Workstations and Enterprise Data Management Solutions on IBM WebSphere software and Information Management software will help Odyssey expand quickly into the financial services community. Odyssey will also work with IBM Global Services on solution implementation to provide additional value-add for customers.

"Financial services firms require end-to-end solutions that are flexible, minimize risk and deliver business value," said Ian Hurst, general manager, IBM banking and financial markets. "Odyssey is a leader in providing advanced financial technology applications to the wealth management industry, and coupled with IBM's hardware, middleware and services, provides our customers with a fully integrated one stop solution."

Under the terms of the agreement, Odyssey will port its leading front/middle office wealth management applications to IBM System p and System x servers and will expand its use of the WebSphere infrastructure software platform and Information Management software. Odyssey will also work closely with IBM to extend its visibility in the wealth and asset management market segment through various co-marketing and sales activities.

Antoine Duchateau, CEO of Odyssey says: "We are very pleased about Odyssey and IBM working so closely together. We have already cooperated in delivering projects, and we are looking forward to further strengthening our ties for our mutual customers, and the benefits that this can bring to all parties"

The relationship with Odyssey is the latest example of IBM's commitment to go-to-market with leading independent software vendors (ISVs) through the ISV Advantage for Industries program. This provides extended benefits for select global industry ISVs adopting IBM's solutions and committing to go-to-market with IBM for a majority of their partner-related system and services business.