Informatica and MongoDB Partner to Offer Cloud-Native Data-Driven Applications

Informatica, a cloud data management provider, has made a new strategic partnership with MongoDB. The partnership enables customers to create a modern class of cloud native, data driven, industry tailored applications powered by MongoDB Atlas and fed with data from Informatica’s AI-powered MDM solution.

“We already leverage the performance and scale of MongoDB Atlas within our cloud-native MDM SaaS solution, so this partnership is a natural next step,” says Rik Tamm-Daniels, group vice president of strategic ecosystems and technology at Informatica. “As a strategic MDM partner of MongoDB, we can help customers consolidate and sunset multiple legacy applications and bring in cloud-native ones built on a trusted data foundation.”

Snowflake Adds Market Operations in Colombia

Snowflake has officially launched market operations in Colombia as it focuses on expanding its customer base in the county and across Latin America. The Colombia base adds to more than 40 Snowflake offices across 19 countries and will be led by Ernesto Serrano, country manager for Colombia. The company plans to build on the professional services team already located in its Colombia office and expand hiring to focus on sales and customer support.

Companies using Snowflake in Colombia include Belcorp, a provider of personal care products, which uses Snowflake to make near real-time business decisions on pricing, sales and inventory; and Juan Valdez, a Colombia-based multinational coffee retailer, which uses Snowflake’s secure data exchange to centralise and analyse data from its stores in more than 500 outlets and offer better and more personalised experiences for users.

interop.io Launches Desktop Interoperability Maturity Model

Interoperability provider interop.io has released its desktop interoperability maturity model, a framework that helps financial institutions progress desktop interoperability through workflow and UI integration. The model defines a pathway to optimising business processes, uncovering data-driven insights, and reducing operational risk. Developers can expect to reduce development, testing, and release times by 50%, according to the company.

Practical benefits are expected to include better client service, better user experience, and demonstrable ROI from improved efficiency and effectiveness and reduced error rates. As well as evaluating their own interop maturity, firms can select the most suitable application provider based on their interop maturity level. Software vendors can better understand their customers’ interop goals, and system integrators can rely on the model for a clear path and milestones for their clients’ digital transformation projects.

TNS Offers Colocation at B3, Brazil’s Largest Stock Exchange

Transaction Network Services (TNS) has established colocation services with B3 S.A., Brazil’s largest stock exchange and the world’s third largest derivatives exchange, based in Sao Paulo. This strategic move not only strengthens TNS’s offerings but also positions it as a key player in connecting global markets with Brazil’s financial trading systems. The partnership provides TNS’s clients with managed hosting, market data, and direct exchange access through its Layer 1 ultra low latency network, enabling efficient trading across various asset classes.

The initiative responds to the growing demand at B3 and opens up new trading avenues for international investors, particularly those from the US and Europe, seeking low-latency connectivity. It underscores TNS’s dedication to expanding its services within the Brazilian market, building on the previous launch of market data access at the exchange in 2021.

Boston Partners Goes Live with Rimes Matrix Investment Management Platform

Boston Partners, a provider of equity strategies, has gone live with Rimes’ Matrix investment management platform as its enterprise data warehouse. The initiative has enabled Boston Partners to streamline its data management operations and integrate data from multiple sources for enterprise reporting, business intelligence, historical retention, and distribution to downstream consuming systems.

The initiative started in January 2023, with the platform going live on 1September 2023. The rapid implementation was orchestrated to ensure a seamless transition, avoiding disruption to day-to-day business operations. More recently, Boston Partners has extended its relationship with Rimes to rely on its ongoing maintenance of the platform and delivery of a constantly improving managed service.

FSB Adds Bank of Communications to 2023 G-SIBs List, Drops Credit Suisse and UniCredit

The Financial Stability Board (FSB) has published its list of 2023 global systemically important banks (G-SIBs) using end-2022 data and applying the assessment methodology designed by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS).

One bank, China’s Bank of Communications, has been added to the list of G-SIBs that were identified in 2022, and two banks, Credit Suisse and UniCredit, have been removed. The overall number of G-SIBs has decreased from 30 to 29.

FSB member authorities apply requirements to G-SIBs that are higher, in terms of additions to the minimum standards that apply to all internationally active banks under the Core Principles of the BCBS. These requirements include a higher capital buffer, total loss-absorbing capacity, resolvability, and higher supervisory expectations.

A new list of G-SIBs will next be published in November 2024.

KX Releases KDB.AI Server for Enterprise Scale Generative AI

KX, a provider of vector and time-series data management, has announced general availability of KDB.AI Server, a highly-performant, scalable, vector database for time-orientated generative AI and contextual search. Deployable in a single container via Docker, KDB.AI Server offers a smooth setup for various environments, including cloud, on-premises, and hybrid systems, allowing businesses to quickly adopt and use its AI capabilities without complex setup processes.

Built to handle high-speed, time-oriented data and multi-modal data processing, KDB.AI Server handles both structured and unstructured enterprise data and enables developers to bring temporal and semantic context and relevancy to AI-powered applications. The server is also optimised for Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) patterns, which ensures that, rather than continuously training or fine-tuning Large Language Models (LLM), developers can bring data relevancy to their prompts delivering better accuracy, lower cost, and less need for GPUs.

Immuta Integrates Data Security Platform with Amazon S3 Access Grants

Data security specialist Immuta has made a native integration between its Data Security Platform and the object storage service Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). The integration provides customers with streamlined data access control and security across storage and compute platforms using Amazon S3 Access Grants, a new Amazon S3 access control feature that enables customers to manage data permissions at scale for user identities managed by corporate directories.

With the Immuta platform and Amazon S3’s Access Grants, users can centralise access control management and use attribute-based access controls to grant permissions for objects in Amazon S3 storage. Immuta builds on Amazon S3 controls, increasing efficiencies with fewer policies and lower manual effort, reducing operational costs and opening new revenue streams.

“Amazon S3 access control is paramount due to the sheer amount of data that moves through the service,” says Steve Touw, Immuta chief technology officer. “Immuta helps simplify data access and security for data stored in Amazon S3 so users can more safely leverage that data for analytics and AI initiatives. This, paired with Immuta’s ‘write once, apply everywhere’ policy approach, helps customers democratise and increase data usage while still adhering to global regulations.”

Europe’s Insurance and Pensions Firms Back EU Ratings Regulation

European plans to regulate ESG ratings providers has won backing from the region’s pension and insurance industries.

PensionsEurope and Insurance Europe, which represent companies across the bloc, said the European Commission’s (EC) proposed Rating Regulation would “lead to a significant enhancement in the transparency of ESG ratings”.

The EC wants to bring ratings providers under the wings of its regulator to help prevent greenwashing and to ensure greater visibility in the calculations that go into each provider’s rating. Critics describe the firms’ methodologies as “black boxes” for the lack of transparency into how they are determined.

“There is an urgent need for the availability and transparency of ESG data to be improved, not only to fulfil regulatory requirements but, more importantly, to reallocate capital to sustainable assets,” the two organisations wrote in a joint statement.

TNS Acquires West Highland Support Services

Transaction Network Services (TNS) has acquired Danbury, CT-based market data solutions provider West Highland Support Services for an undisclosed sum. The combination of TNS and West Highland services into a single trading infrastructure stack and an integrated offering, will offer connectivity, monitoring and consulting to professional traders, institutions and financial services vendors worldwide.

The acquisition aims to reduce cost and complexity for TNS clients across every element of their market data estate, including hosting, connectivity, middleware distribution, data usage and incident management. All West Highland employees, products and services will integrate into TNS.