Misys Plc’s banking division, Midas-Kapiti International, says it will merge its two trading systems, FIST and Citydesk, into one system with which it hopes to increase its share of the market. The company said that within the next two years it wants to be a market leader in two geographical areas, although it won’t say which those are, but FIST has been successful in Japan and Citydesk in Europe. The two products were brought together by the amalgamation of ACT International, which had Citydesk, and Kapiti, with FIST, when Misys acquired ACT Group Plc in February (CI No 2,602). The first step in the integration will be to introduce the same interface, the 32-bit Market Watch currently used on FIST, to both products. It will enable communication between Citydesk and FIST and give Citydesk users Windows NT capabilites, while maintaining their current structures. The merged product, when it appears, will be called Market Watch; its main operating system will be Windows NT, but Unix versions will be available. From the beginning of next year, the names FIST and Citydesk will disappear and all products will be sold under the Market Watch name. But the company said existing customers’ systems will continue to be supported. Midas-Kapiti describes the two systems as complementary, rather than competitors. FIST was marketed to trading rooms information technology departments for application development; Citydesk was sold directly into the trading room and has a functionally-rich user interface. The company said it is attempting to benefit from the recent increase in size of its development team to produce common modules that can run on top of either system, and a feed handler gateway between Citydesk and FIST, so that FIST users can have access to market data from a wider range of sources than at present. There are already 10 FIST clients world-wide that have the Market Watch interface. Citydesk users with Market Watch are expected at the end of the year or beginning of next year at the latest.
