Avistar Introduces Research Collaboration Community
June 23, 2008
Avistar Communications Corp. has developed a platform that will let buy- and sell-side firms' research staff and their corporate clients collaborate in real time via their desktops.
Expected to launch in September, the Securities Community Network (SCN) will offer customers a video and Web conferencing community, and will let bulge-bracket firms quickly deliver analysis, strategies and news interpretation to investors and the buy side, said the San Mateo, Calif.-based company earlier this month. The service, which is currently in beta-testing with firms including Deutsche Asset Management, will initially be available to the buy and sell side, with corporations coming on in January.
Calling SCN "the next stage in the evolution of networked professional communities," Avistar CEO Simon Moss said his company's financial services experience and software will provide "a platform for interaction that is powerful, effective, simple to deploy, and will increase in value as more and more firms, technology providers and partners join the community."
Moss said in an interview that firms see in SCN "a way to reduce expenses drastically yet increase the timely use of market commentary, opinion and research and address some of the concerns in reducing the carbon footprint of total global businesses. ... Through SCN, research can be shared remotely, without the need to fly teams of staff from place to place--the result can be a 70 percent reduction in travel." According to Moss, remote collaboration makes in-person meetings more effective when they are needed.
Users of SCN, who will be able to contact participants and share information from desktops, conference rooms and laptops, will pay a monthly subscription fee. Avistar, which was founded in 1993 and has installed video communications systems at hedge funds, midsize and bulge-bracket firms in more than 40 countries, says that leading firms have expressed interest in the SCN service and will continue to sign on over the summer.
In April, Avistar announced a partnership with Nice Systems, a Ra'anana, Israel-based supplier of communications management and analytics systems, to provide compliance and risk management solutions for voice-over-Internet protocol, or VoIP, videoconferencing. The companies said that they will help organizations avoid the need to update software at the desktop level and let them leverage their existing investments in communications and compliance systems.
"Evolving compliance law means that in addition to recording voice calls, financial services companies must also be able to capture the audio element of the video calls that today form part of regular trading-floor communications at many firms" across the globe, said Darren Innes, general manager of worldwide sales for Avistar.
