Comdex 2001: Gates billing MSN Money Professional
Published: 12 Nov 2001 16:23 GMT
In his Comdex keynote address on Sunday night, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates unveiled a new suite of online financial services that the company is preparing to test early next year.
Code-named MSN Money Professional, the online offering is another salvo in Microsoft's growing arsenal of .Net services. Advent Software is the first company to embrace the new service, which will be available to about 6,500 clients. Microsoft plans to begin testing MSN Money Professional next year.
"With this service, we're extending the benefits of the .Net platform to the financial services industry, connecting advisers and clients in a more personalised and unified way," said Bob Muglia, group vice president of the Microsoft .Net Services Group, in a statement. "'MSN Money Professional' exemplifies our commitment to provide technologies that embrace the accessibility and flexibility of the Web to help businesses meet the needs of their customers."
Microsoft has been championing its .Net software-as-a-service strategy as the best way to move beyond the challenges the company faces selling software. Through .Net, Microsoft envisions building the infrastructure to deliver -- or enable third parties to deliver -- a broad range of services over the Internet. The company also hopes to sell more software on a subscription basis, rather than simply collecting a one-time fee.
So far, a majority of announced .Net services have focused on the business-to-consumer market. MSN Money Professional is the first service clearly targeted at business customers, in this case financial advisers.
Like many other .Net offerings, Microsoft is looking to its MSN Web properties to deliver the suite of services. Over the last year, the company has been quietly laying the groundwork by integrating MSN in virtually every software product it sells. The Microsoft Money and Great Plains Accounting financial software applications both rely heavily on MSN. Through Smart Tags, Microsoft's Office XP links back to MSN. Windows XP hooks to MSN throughout the operating system for functions such as media playing and instant messaging, among others.
The new suite of services is expected to lean on Microsoft software, as do other existing services. Microsoft's suite of small-business bCentral services, for example, relies on FrontPage for Web publishing and one of the company's two money-management programs for accounting.
Still, the Web-based service could lessen financial advisers' reliance on desktop software to conduct their businesses. Advisers will have access to a private portal for managing clients' investment portfolios, research news and stock quotes. The service also will provide a secure connection to the advisers' record system for feeding the data into a Web-based portfolio manager. In addition, financial advisers will be able to publish their reports as needed from MSN Money Professional.
Advent Software will use MSN Money Professional to build WealthLine, a Web-based adviser-client collaboration tool for financial institutions.
"Microsoft and Advent both identified the need to deliver easy-to-use yet robust Web tools to our financial industry clients," said Peter Caswell, Advent's chief executive of Software, in a statement. "By combining Advent's document publishing and portfolio reporting with Microsoft's leading personal finance Web site and unparalleled notification services, we're providing financial professionals with the best Web-based service available."
For full Comdex coverage see ZDNet UK's Comdex '01 News Special.
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