APPLICATIONS

Microsoft and leading financial IT outsourcing consortium collaborate to implement Basel II solution for the Italian and European banking and financial services market. Microsoft Corp today announced that SEC SERVIZI, a leading IT outsourcing consortium to the Italian banking and financial market, has gone live with a new data warehouse solution in compliance with the Basel II directive, fully meeting the deadline set by the Bank of Italy. The solution, which is based on Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and was developed in collaboration with Microsoft's partner, RDB & Open Systems, will allow customer banks to run credit risk analysis, provide certified data and reports to their risk management desks, and collect and manage all the required information to comply with the EU financial markets directive. The project, which started in May 2006, is part of SEC SERVIZI's corporate strategy to invest continually in the development of information technology systems to ensure the highest level of customer service to both its partner and customer banks. "We are extremely delighted with the results of this project, and we are already looking at new ways to apply the data warehouse solution and bring further benefits to our customers," said Luciano Gitti, CEO of SEC SERVIZI. "It is our intention to carry on developing this architecture which, in time, will allow us to widen our offerings to include business intelligence and other types of dimensional analysis. We are also very pleased with all the support received from Microsoft's consultants during this period, and we look forward to continuing working with them in the near future." Anders Abrahamsson, managing director for Microsoft EMEA Financial Services Industry, said, "More than ever we are witnessing exciting times for the European financial market, with technology and regulations changing the landscape and promoting cross-borders operations and expansions. With the new data warehouse solution, SEC SERVIZI has now in place a flexible architecture that will help customer banks to comply not only with the current Basel II directive, but also to adopt a proactive approach towards other market regulations. With this new, easy-to-use technology, people will be able to carry out their tasks faster and better, further contributing to the company's success."