Vol 1 No 12
BRIEF OBJECTS
BRIEF OBJECTS
KOCH TAKES TRIPLE POINT'S TRADING SYSTEM
Koch Industries, the Wichita, Kansas-based oil trading group, has signed a $2.25 million upgrade deal to extend its installation of Triple Point Technology's Tempest 2000 oil trading system. A spokes person for Triple Point, of Westport, Connecticut, says Koch's original Tempest licence only covered front office energy trading at its Wichita headquarters. Koch has now signed up for a global front-to-back office Tempest installation covering physical and derivative energy products in Wichita, Houston, London and Singapore. Sources say Koch will be using the application to trade products based on crude oil, refined products, fuel oil, and feedstock.
TIBCO BUYS INCOMMON FOR 'NET LINKS TO TIB
Tibco Software announced last week that it has acquired Incommon, a two-year-old start-up whose technology will add Internet/intranet content distribution capabilities to The Information Bus (TIB). While the "Downtown" package from Incommon will continue to be supported by Tibco, the company plans to incorporate it into the TIB, allowing it to transport Web pages, Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents, as well as video and audio media across an enterprise that uses the TIB, says Mark Bowles, Tibco's vice president of TIB products. "They've been partners of ours for about eight months," Bowles says. Once Tibco became familiar with what Incommon does, "we had no motivation to re-invent the wheel." Thus, it made sense for Tibco to acquire Incommon's technology as well as 10 of the company's 12 employees--many of whom came from Oracle. A prototype of the Downtown-enabled TIB has been available since the summer and is in beta-test, Bowles says. Tibco will have more product information to announce next month. The Incommon developers bring with them an Internet/intranet focus that is new for some at Tibco. "They're kicking our butts a little and forcing us to work in different ways," Bowles says.
SIA WOULD LIKE DECEMBER 31, 1999 TO BE A HOLIDAY
If the Securities Industry Association (SIA) board gets its way, there might be one benefit to the Year 2000 mess. In order to prevent any disruption in service at the start of the new millennium, the SIA has endorsed a proposal to declare December 31, 1999 as a trading holiday. The SIA board has also called upon the financial services industry to establish a unified position on the holiday. In theory, this would allow securities firms, the securities markets and other companies to complete as much year-end processing as possible before January 1, 2000. This proposal would also jibe with the SIA's project plan, which requires firms to test their own systems for Year 2000 compliance, test again with the firms that process their trades and test finally on an industry-wide basis. "A day off on Friday, December 31, 1999, will give firms additional time to finish up the year's business before the clock turns," says Irv Weiser, who is SIA chairman as well as chairman, CEO and president of Dain Rauscher. "This is the largest technology project the industry has undertaken."
NEW COGNOTEC OFFICES IN A/P, FRANKFURT
Cognotec, of Dublin, has opened offices in Hong Kong and Frankfurt, and the staffs of each will report to Pat Dolan, the newly appointed head of global sales. Another new appointee, Alan Railton, director of sales for Asia/Pacific, will head up the Hong Kong office while Michael Mengel will head up the Frankfurt office.
DISPLAY.IT TROUBLES CONTINUE AFTER LEVIN
Display.IT, in liquidation since last October, is still in trouble. The MacDonald Partnership, which was appointed as the liquidator of the firm created by Peter Levin, may sue the last directors of the company--David Ward and Dr. Humayun Hanif--alleging that they failed to take the advice of an expert brought in to save the firm. During this past autumn, Ward and Hanif took over what was left of the company after Levin resigned, and paid themselves £25,000 (or approximately $37,500) for their ill-fated efforts.
