Tool Helps Financial-Services Firm Reach Out to High-End ...
Overview
Country or Region: United States
Industry: Financial services
Customer Profile
Headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, Fidelity Investments is among the world’s largest financial-services companies, with more than 19 million shareholders.
Business Situation
Fidelity sought to give its high-end independent brokers a more powerful, flexible tool for serving the needs of those brokers’ clients.
Solution
A new application called Streetscape for Windows® allows brokers to view customer data in new and powerful ways, while expediting the purchase or sale of Fidelity investment products.
Benefits
■ Dynamic view of accounts
■ Secure transactions
■ Ease of development transition
■ Ease of deployment
■ Familiar Windows interface
■ Model for future software development
| | |“With .NET…, we could get automatic installation, plus a richer user interface, plus… provide brokers with best-of-breed products from anybody…. You can’t do that with a browser-based product.”
Al Tedesco, Vice President of Business Development, Fidelity Investments
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| | | |Streetscape for Windows®, a system developed by Fidelity Investments, gives brokers using Fidelity |
| | | |services the ability to easily manage customer accounts while gaining real-time access to Fidelity |
| | | |financial products. Drawing on the flexibility and power of Web Services Enhancements for Microsoft® |
| | | |.NET and smart-client design, Streetscape for Windows is an easily deployed, powerful system that |
| | | |enables Fidelity and its brokers to better serve customers while improving the sales of financial |
| | | |products. |
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| | | |[pic] |
| | | | |
Situation
Fidelity Investments is the largest mutual fund company in the United States, and with 19 million shareholders is among the world’s largest financial-services companies. Customers have some U.S.$1.9 trillion invested with Fidelity, split between Fidelity-managed assets and funds for which the company performs administrative and record-keeping services. Fidelity’s investment management services are provided by investment professionals working at banks, trust companies, insurance companies, and independent broker/dealers.
In the past few years, Fidelity has made a strategic decision to focus more resources on independent broker/dealers. These brokers have a high potential for generating considerable business for Fidelity because their clients tend to have extensive investments across an array of financial products. To attract more business from independent broker/dealers, Fidelity needed a tool that would give them the power to offer high-end clients personalized, customized service, rather than the mass-market services for which Fidelity is well known.
In 2001, Fidelity launched a Java-based browser application called Streetscape, a tool that helped brokers and other investment advisers provide more customized service to clients while driving business to Fidelity. Streetscape offered brokers desktop access to real-time market data, news and research, account management tools, and business-building tools. Streetscape also gave brokers the ability to buy and sell equities, options, and mutual funds through the browser. Since its introduction, Streetscape has been used by about 165 broker/dealers and 50,000 investment professionals.
But by 2003, Fidelity’s technology experts realized that Streetscape was limited because it was based on Java. In general, the product worked well, but because it was a complex, rich-client application, it was difficult to support, and new releases required considerable technical assistance for brokers who were deploying the system. Streaming data to Streetscape exposed the limitations of the applet-based system. It wasn’t possible to integrate Streetscape tightly with environments based on the Microsoft® Windows® operating systems, which most brokers used in their workplaces. Most important, Streetscape still didn’t offer the premium class of broker service that Fidelity sought.
“We really wanted to offer a more premium product than our browser-based service,” says Al Tedesco, Vice President of Business Development at Fidelity Investments. Tedesco adds that he wanted to wean Fidelity from its tendency to develop stand-alone applications for individual business units.
Solution
Although Tedesco’s requirements for the new system were well defined, it wasn’t initially clear what path the company should take in developing it. “We started to look at a class of applications called ‘X Internet,’ a term that Forrester Research coined,” Tedesco says, referring to a concept of peer-to-peer systems that departs from the server-centric model of the Internet. “Microsoft .NET was evolving parallel to that, so we looked into it. With .NET, we realized, we could get automatic installation, plus a richer user interface, plus we could provide brokers with best-of-breed products from anybody, whether Fidelity or a third party. You can’t do that with a browser-based product.”
Early in 2003, a team from Fidelity began designing a framework for a new version of Streetscape called Streetscape for Windows. The objectives of the new system were twofold. First, the team wanted to simplify the distribution of system updates by eliminating the need to send out software CDs and then deal with technical problems arising from the installation of the updates. Second, the new Streetscape for Windows had to let brokers work faster and more productively and give them greater control over their customer information, better access to real-time financial information, and the ability to conduct customer transactions easily. The proposed Streetscape update required new menu and navigation controls, a logical structure for moving around the application, tools for saving customer accounts, and the ability for a broker to get real-time quotes about equity holdings in a customer’s portfolio. “It all pointed to .NET,” says Tedesco. With .NET connection software, Fidelity could use the power of Web services to set up Streetscape so that it could operate across platforms and programming languages.
Furthermore, the new version of Streetscape had to be loosely coupled so that new data sources could be added as needed and to facilitate communication with Fidelity’s Java-based and UNIX-based servers. Complex data sets such as hash tables had to be transferable between operating systems. And, because client account information is extremely sensitive, Streetscape for Windows had to provide support for an extremely high level of security by encrypting data as the data is transferred between brokers’ computers running Streetscape and Fidelity’s back-end servers. At the same time, Fidelity wanted to simplify the new system’s design by separating the security component from the business logic.
In the summer of 2003, a prototype of Streetscape for Windows was developed. A beta version was completed by the summer of 2004, and beta testing continued through late 2004. Early in 2005, Fidelity began pilot-testing Streetscape for Windows, at which time about 50 users implemented the application as their primary link to Fidelity.
Benefits
Simplified Development
The original version of Streetscape was a Web-based application built with Java. Although that application improved brokers’ access to brokerage information, it had limitations, says Ian Langley, Program Developer for Fidelity. Upgrading to new editions was a major technical headache for clients. It also could not be customized to suit particular brokers’ preferences, an important feature given that the high-end brokers with whom Fidelity sought strengthened relations needed a high degree of flexibility to suit their clients. The use of applets as conduits for streaming also proved to be limiting. After looking at several alternatives for an improved version of Streetscape that would offer better client services, Fidelity developers settled on Microsoft .NET, which is software for connecting people, information, systems, and devices.
.NET connection software offered several advantages, says Langley, including an easy transition for developers used to working in Java. “We had to relearn some class libraries, but the way you use them is very similar to how they’re used in Java. And because .NET is a Microsoft technology, we had very tight integration with Windows XP and it was very easy to integrate into the desktop. With Java, doing that is next to impossible.”
Streetscape for Windows was developed using Microsoft Web Services Enhancements (WSE) for Microsoft .NET. Because WSE is platform independent, Fidelity easily linked Streetscape to its Java-based back-end servers. Web services also simplified tasks such as integrating back-end functions such as logon information, account positions, account information, and more, all of which reside on UNIX-based servers.
Simplified Deployment
Microsoft .NET also helped Fidelity to create a program that is easily deployed. Each time a broker opens Streetscape for Windows, it discreetly links with Fidelity servers to check on the availability of upgrades or any important changes. Originally, developers thought that they would make upgrading an automated, background process. But they decided to give users some discretion as to when to perform this task. Therefore, when a user logs on to Streetscape for Windows and an upgrade is available, the program offers three options: Run the update for Streetscape immediately; download the update but delay implementing it until later; or continue running the current version.
|“This is a new paradigm of software |
|development for us. If we pull it off, this is|
|big.” |
|Al Tedesco, Vice President of Business |
|Development, Fidelity Investments |
Architecture
Work on Streetscape for Windows began in early 2004 and required about six months for the beta release. Development of all new code was done using the Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET 2003 development system and the Microsoft Visual C#® .NET 2003 development tool. Component Object Model (COM) interoperability, a feature of the Microsoft .NET Framework, was used to integrate the Reuters market data components. Infragistics was used as vendor for the toolbar and grid.
The project was built using NAnt, with log4net used for logging. A security model based on the Web Services Security Language (WS-Security) was employed to protect the Web services layer.
In the future, says Langley, Fidelity will migrate Streetscape for Windows to WSE version 2.0.
Future Plans
Streetscape for Windows moved into a pilot program early in 2005, deployed to about 50 users. Fidelity planned an update for the second quarter of 2005 that would add improved navigation and usability. Fidelity is also drawing from user feedback to determine which additional changes will be made to Streetscape for Windows prior to its full deployment late in 2005.
For Fidelity, Streetscape for Windows gives the company a useful tool for entering a new market: high-end brokers. “That’s the value-ended part of the market for us,” says Al Tedesco.
Beyond that, Streetscape for Windows is the first of what Tedesco says will be a suite of applications that put an end to the days when the various Fidelity units produced stand-alone software that met their own particular needs. Already, Tedesco says, the pattern used to make Streetscape for Windows is being adapted to provide an investment-adviser workstation that can be used to model various investment scenarios for brokerage clients. It’s also being used to develop a workstation for Fidelity’s wealth-management consultants, and as a smart-client tool for use within Tedesco’s own group. “This is a new paradigm of software development for us,” says Tedesco of Streetscape for Windows and the Microsoft .NET connection software that made it possible. “If we pull it off, this is big.”
Microsoft .NET
Microsoft .NET is software that connects people, information, systems, and devices through the use of Web services. Web services are a combination of protocols that enable computers to work together by exchanging messages. Web services are based on the standard protocols of XML, SOAP, and WSDL, which allow them to interoperate across platforms and programming languages.
.NET is integrated across Microsoft products and services, providing the ability to quickly build, deploy, manage, and use connected, secure solutions with Web services. These solutions provide agile business integration and the promise of information anytime, anywhere, on any device.
For more information about Microsoft .NET and Web services, please visit these Web sites:
msdn.webservices
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“[B]ecause .NET is a Microsoft technology, we had very tight integration with Windows XP and it was very easy to integrate into the desktop.”
Ian Langley, Program Developer, Fidelity Investments
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| |Software and Services
■ Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003
■ Technologies
− Microsoft .NET Framework
− Web Services Enhancements for Microsoft .NET | | |
© 2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Microsoft, Visual C#, Visual Studio, and Windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.
Document published June 2005 | | |
For More Information
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For more information about Fidelity Investments products and services, call (800) 343-3548 or visit the Web site at:
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