Fidelity is the first financial services technology partner to adopt a standards-based approach to enterprise messaging and integration. Within its suite of solutions for mid-tier and large banks, Fidelity has been and continues to aggressively pursue programs to address the enterprise integration challenges of its customer market. The adoption of IFX provides Fidelity with a non-proprietary approach to defining and providing banking services. Fidelity will support the IFX messaging standard across its products and application layers, including its channel solutions, integration solutions and core banking solutions.

Fidelity expects to provide dramatic time-to-market improvements as a result of the adoption of a standard interface across its applications. This approach to integration changes the activities related to deploying and upgrading applications from custom and ad-hoc to routine. Additionally, by removing the integration work from the time-to-market critical path, Fidelity anticipates providing significant cost savings and functional synergies to its clients by offering the ability to combine applications quickly and confidently.

"We have the resources and domain expertise to address the technological challenges associated with transactional integration," said Frank Sanchez, president, leveraged product development for Fidelity Information Services. "Adopting IFX leverages a substantial body of existing assets, facilitates multi-channel architectures and enables supply chain economics around services."

Fidelity will aggressively build out its pervasive implementation of the IFX library through its development initiatives in 2005. The build-out will include fully IFX enabling Fidelity's real time and batch core banking systems, as well as Fidelity's channel applications. Currently, Fidelity has close to 100 IFX-compliant messages in production and available for customers.

Fidelity recognizes that customers have made investments integrating to its solutions and Fidelity will continue to support the existing interfaces. However, Fidelity will offer compelling value propositions around its strategic investments in channels, core banking and integration solutions. "We see a standards-based messaging solution as critical to unlocking the investment value of Fidelity's product development initiatives," states Michael Rotella, Fidelity's senior vice president for Enterprise Integration Solutions.

Additionally, Fidelity's Enterprise Integration Solutions team will provide an IFX transaction hub and toolset that encapsulates popular third-party enterprise architecture integration infrastructures and facilitates addressing non-Fidelity integration challenges.