Obsidian Wireless, the UK's leading provider of compliant mobile voice and data recording solutions for the financial services sector, announces that it has signed an exclusive agreement with Racom AS in Norway for the provision of mobile recording technology.
Racom is Norway's largest voice recording provider, with the majority of the country's trading floor market for the recording of fixed lines. This new partnership sees Obsidian Wireless take a significant step into the European market, starting with a country whose financial sector mobile recording legislation comes into effect on 1st April 2011. Obsidian's Mobile Compliance SuiteTM was chosen after a rigorous selection process which also involved two other UK competitors.
Commenting on the reasons behind the decision, Racom CEO Steinar Christiansen said "We have been evaluating the market for over a year now, with the aim of finding a mobile call recording vendor that fits into how we think and how we plan our business. We looked at all three UK vendors, to compare their technical solutions and their organisational structure, and Obsidian was the best one. Their organisation is different to the others, we liked their set-up and they were also recommended to us by contacts in the business. One of the most important things for us, with any partner we choose, is that we can we work together - and it's also vital that their focus is on this type of communication, which Obsidian's is.
We evaluated the methodology, and there are four or five different ways in which you can do mobile recording - but the Obsidian methodology is the best way to do it, looking at the way it's designed. We have been down the route of looking at other solutions - for example using a conferencing platform as a base, as a couple of the competitors are using - but we were not happy with this methodology. Some of our customers have tried this before and they claimed it was simply not good enough. We liked the fact that Obsidian have been developing the solution for over three years and have tried all the options before finding a solution that works.
We particularly liked the vMiG for its flexibility and for its Least Cost Routing which was also very important, as of courourse is security. Our technical team has evaluated the vMiG and was impressed with the robustness of its built-in security. In fact, the vMiG is better than a standard PBX in many ways, and seems very robust. Obsidian solution is based on the latest technology, making it the best option for market at the moment - and we know that Obsidian will always use best technology as it becomes available. We liked the MCSTM solution and can't see anything that we cannot record - including mobile electronic communications as well as voice. It's very important that we can do this also."
Norway will be the first European country to enforce mobile recording in the financial services sector, after legislation was agreed by Finanstilsynet - The Financial Supervisory Authority of Norway in 2009. Regulated organisations in all other European countries, many of whom will undoubtedly have to follow suit in the near future, are watching Norway closely to see how this will affect the market - and to determine which solutions are chosen to address the regulatory requirement.
Paul Liesching, CEO of Obsidian Wireless added, "With the large market shares of the Norwegian fixed line trading floor market, Racom is the perfect partner for Obsidian as we take Mobile Compliance SuiteTM to market in Scandinavia. The thorough selection process which they undertook clearly illustrated to us that they were a company we wanted to do business with. In addition, Racom's in-depth understanding of voice and data management and security at the highest level, combined with their frankly incredible hosting facilities, means that we are delighted to have been chosen to exclusively support them in the Norwegian market."
Not only will Racom be selling the Mobile Compliance SuiteTM to its customer as a standalone solution, the company will also be setting up a hosted offering, which will be built on the same Obsidian technology.
This agreement came just days after the UK Financial Services Authority announced that the exemption on mobile recording, which it granted when it enforced the recording of fixed lines in 2008, will be removed as of 14th November 2011.