Under the enhanced agreement FDP will increase sales and technical headcount in the Kx New York sales office, which has been staffed by FDP consultants since 2002. In addition FDP will continue to provide worldwide sales support for Kx products in all industry sectors excluding insurance.

Michael O'Neill, Chief Operations Officer commented: "The new agreement enables FDP to offer increased value to Kx customers. We not only continue to have early access to Kx development plans, we also have further solidified cooperation with Kx in all aspects of selling and supporting its growing customer base worldwide."

The new contract comes on the back of a very successful period for both FDP and Kx. The past six months have seen FDP sign consulting and support agreements with increasing numbers of Kx customers (a number of which are renewable on a rolling basis) with total value well in excess of £1 million. The customers, which include some of the world's largest investment banks, are mainly based in NYC, London and Tokyo.

O'Neill added, "We are delighted to further strengthen our relationship with Kx Systems. FDP has the largest pool of Kx technology consultants worldwide and continues to invest in new resources to meet the growing consultancy demand from new and existing Kx customers. We have also hired experienced consultants from the telecoms sector in an effort to pursue sales in this area more aggressively. The partnership has been a very positive one for both companies and we look forward to continued mutual success in the future."

"Service to our growing customer base is integral to the mission of Kx, and we are pleased to be consolidating our relationship with FDP" said Kx CEO Janet Lustgarten. "Our relationship with FDP allows Kx to concentrate on our core expertise in developing high-performance relational database platforms that deliver on the vision of real-time business for financial services and other data-intensive industries."