The past several months have seen a recasting of what we at A-Team loosely term the ‘next-generation enterprise data management’ segment. Specifically, we’ve seen both PolarLake and Cadis Software – both of which followed the furrow ploughed over the years by the likes of Asset Control and Goldensource – snapped up by Bloomberg and Markit.
For us, this all makes for interesting copy in the pages of Reference Data Review. But for others, this spells opportunity.
Vienna-based AIM Software is one such company. A household name in Central Europe – the company featured heavily in our recent foray to the FIMA DACH meeting in Frankfurt, where AIM’s co-presentation with client Vontobel was among the highlights – AIM is now opening up here in London. And it’s the market segment now occupied by Bloomberg PolarLake and Markit EDM that the Austrian firm has in its sights.
The supplier of the Gain reference data and risk management platform, which bulked up through the acquisition of ABI Infomatic back in June, has set up a London office and hired Michael Walford-Grant from PolarLake as country manager to lead the offensive.
After nearly 10 years as country manager at PolarLake, Walford-Grant’s arrival at AIM gives the company a short-cut into the London world of enterprise data management. Walford-Grant brings to the table not only with experience of a similar role at PolarLake, but also with a background in sales management at companies including Aleri, now part of Sybase (now part of SAP), SunGard Business Integration and Lombard Risk.
With offices in Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg and France, AIM turned its attention to setting up a base in the UK and hiring a UK and Ireland country manager following the acquisition of competitor ABI. The acquisition added 25 European customers, including the likes of ING in Belgium and UBS in Switzerland, to AIM’s roster of 120 global customers, ABI added 10 employees for a current AIM total of 85. Most importantly, it added a suite of reference data management solutions, including a golden copy solution for reference data and a corporate actions solution, as well as the Agio data management platform and toolbox that will be used to enrich the Gain platform as users are migrated from Agio to Gain.
Commenting on the company’s additional location, Josef Sommeregger, vice president of sales and business development, said: “Opening an office in London will enable us to target new opportunities in the UK and Ireland, and improve the level of service we provide to existing clients and partners. The company has invested a great deal in developing a modern flexible platform and a suite of packaged applications for the asset management and services community. These have improved implementation time and driven down total cost of ownership for our clients.”
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