QuantHouse, the independent global leader of end-to-end high performance market data and trading API based technologies, today announced that Horizon Software, the leading provider of electronic trading solutions and algorithmic technology, has joined the qh API Ecosystem to benefit from global reach and end-to-end performance.

This collaboration results in a unique offering, which will enable buy-side and sell-side firms to benefit from high-capacity and ultra-low latency trading systems to complement or replace existing legacy trading infrastructures. Award-winning Horizon provides sophisticated tools for creating, testing and implementing automated algorithmic strategies within incredibly short timescales; the proprietary fibre optic network from QuantHouse offers a proximity hosting infrastructure and unique end-to-end, ultra-low latency market data feed via QuantFEED.

Users can benefit from the Horizon Replayer to replay an entire day of QuantHouse historical market data for a broad range of asset classes and instruments, including stocks, futures, options, bonds, indexes and ETFs. For the first time this enables traders to test and fine-tune their algo strategies using real data.

The new solution is available via QuantHouse’s API Ecosystem, a global initiative connecting multiple API providers with the aim of fostering greater innovation and cross-selling opportunities between ecosystem participants. This is achieved by helping providers turn their software and hardware product portfolios into global, available on-demand solutions through open APIs, removing the burden of the traditional per customer implementation model.

Sylvain Thieullent, CEO, Horizon Software, said: “The performance of the Horizon Platform is closely linked to the quality of the trading infrastructures our clients are using. We want to be able to offer easy access to our trading technology combined with performance and global reach. This is the reason we are so pleased to have our solutions available on the qh API Ecosystem. I am confident that our clients will be quick to benefit from this collaboration.”

Stephane Leroy, Business Co-Founder and Chief Revenue Officer, QuantHouse, added: “At QuantHouse we understand the need for rapid adoption by clients of advanced API based trading solutions. We are delighted to welcome Horizon onto the qh API Ecosystem as it will help clients improve their trading performance while optimising their investments.”

Proficio(TM), one of the world's fastest growing global managed security service providers (MSSP) delivering managed detection and response (MDR), today announced "First Year Free," a limited-time promotion for select new clients. The exclusive offer provides a free first year of managed security services, including global 24x7 monitoring and alerting.

Proficio's goal is to help companies manage the increasing cost and scarcity of needed cybersecurity resources to achieve a fully protected environment. The program also allows organizations that are unsatisfied with their current MSSP to make a switch, regardless of contract terms and timelines. The program is exclusively available to the first 30 qualified clients.  For terms and details, visit: www.proficio.com/first-year-free.

"The security landscape is complex and challenging - an understatement, given the number of moving parts that are involved in defending an enterprise from cyberattacks. Organizations are struggling to find proactive and predictive security solutions," states Martha Vazquez, Senior Research Analyst, Infrastructure Services at IDC. "Protection comes at a steep price, and many companies are outsourcing their cybersecurity to managed security services providers (MSSPs) to offset increasing costs and leverage the external MSSP's expertise. Proficio's offer gives executives an opportunity to outsource their security needs without significant upfront costs, making it easier to switch existing vendors or kickstart a new program."

Proficio provides a range of cybersecurity services, from 24x7 monitoring and alerting, to incident response and cybersecurity consulting, through their global security operations centers (SOC) in San Diego, Barcelona and Singapore. Proficio is recognized in the industry for its white-glove service, customizable solution packages, automated response capabilities, and alert accuracy.

"Proficio is fully committed to providing innovative solutions to our clients," said Tim McElwee, Proficio's President and Chairman of the Board. "That requires creative thinking in all areas of our business which is how we've been successful. Organizations need real solutions that address their individual needs, and this new program certainly makes world-class cybersecurity services attainable."

"The marketplace was speaking loudly and our leadership team chose to take action," stated Dustin Ritter, Chief Marketing Officer at Proficio. "Organizations know they're vulnerable and are looking for an immediate solution. Unfortunately, most cybersecurity leaders find themselves in one of two positions: they either lack the internal resources to handle threats effectively and don't have a budget, or they are unhappy with their current services provider but are hindered by contract constraints. This program was specifically created to remove these hurdles that obstruct complete cyber protection."

GMO Internet's (https://ir.gmo.jp/en/) Bitcoin mining business will launch a token sale (ICO) in 2018, the purpose of which is to sell next-generation mining boards. We will issue tokens as a method to buy next-generation mining boards. 

GMO Internet's Bitcoin mining business

Cryptocurrency (Bitcoin) mining business requires computers enabling highly sophisticated and intensive computation and also requires securing stable power supply to operate and cool the computers. Accordingly, GMO Internet is currently preparing to provide the following with an aim to enter the Bitcoin mining business.

1. We will use cutting-edge 7 nm process technology for chips to be used in the mining process, and are currently working on its research and development with our alliance partner having semiconductor design technology to realize high performance computer for mining. It will be possible to reduce power consumption compared to the existing mining machines with the same performance, and achieve a computational performance of 10TH/s per chip.
2. In terms of power supply, we will operate a next-generation mining center utilizing plentiful renewable energy in Northern Europe, and secure clean and inexpensive power supply, which will allow us to control the costs of operating facilities. After preparing the facilities, we will launch the mining based on ready-made mining computers by December 31, 2017, which will lead to the full-scale entry into the Bitcoin mining business.

After the launch of the Bitcoin mining business, we will also sell our own next-generation mining boards.

Launching token sale for the sales of next-generation mining boards

GMO Internet's Bitcoin mining business will launch a token sale (ICO) in 2018, planning the sales of next-generation mining boards.

We will consider properly the laws and regulations that are applicable to us under the current legislation including Payment Services Act and the Financial Instrument and Exchange Act, and will be conscious of the protection of token purchasers and stakeholders' profits when designing the token sale.

 Skybox(TM) Security, a global leader in cybersecurity management, announced today the company signed a definitive agreement to receive a $150 million growth equity investment led by CVC Capital Partners' Growth Fund (CVC Growth) for $100 million, with participation from Pantheon for $50 million. CVC Capital Partners is a leading private equity and investment advisory firm, and Pantheon is a prominent global investor in private equity, infrastructure and real assets. 

Based in Silicon Valley, Skybox has a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 46 percent and positive cash flow (2014 ­- 2016). This round of funding will enable an accelerated investment in sales and marketing, customer care and R&D. It will also be used for potential M&A activity, to capitalize on the approximately $10 billion market opportunity in cybersecurity management.

Skybox builds best-in-class cybersecurity management software that gives customers comprehensive visibility of their unique attack surface. The software uses analytics to prioritize an organization's risk exposures and recommend informed action to best address those exposures. These capabilities extend across highly complex networks, including those in physical, virtual, cloud and operational technology (OT) environments. The company's broad platform, the Skybox(TM) Security Suite, enables organizations to reduce security risks that attackers can find and exploit, such as device misconfigurations and policy violations, as well as exposed and unpatched vulnerabilities.

"Skybox's track record is impressive and there is clear demand for their solutions," said Jason Glass, senior managing director of CVC Growth Partners. "It is a true leader in cybersecurity management, helping organizations better protect themselves and become more efficient. Gidi Cohen, Skybox's co-founder and CEO, is a respected innovator in security management and analytics, and we look forward to working with him and the wider executive team as we expand Skybox's offering and global reach."

The demand for Skybox's solutions has been increasing due to a maturing cybersecurity market and the desire among security leaders to more efficiently manage security programs and gain better ROI from existing technologies. In the first half of 2017, for example, Skybox showed a 62 percent increase in sales and 59 percent increase in product transactions compared to the same period last year (January 1 - June 30).

"Enterprises, governments... everyone is either embarking on or going through massive digital transformation, and this means new challenges for security because the attack surface of these organizations is growing more complex," said Skybox CEO Gidi Cohen. "We've been consistently evolving our technology to meet those challenges. With this investment, we'll accelerate that innovation, focusing on some of the most critical areas, such as security management for the cloud and the OT networks that control critical infrastructure."

Skybox customers are Global 5000 companies and government agencies, in more than 50 countries and nearly every industry. The company's products are used by six of the top 10 global banks, 10 global telecommunications firms, five of the world's largest consumer goods manufacturers and 10 of the largest energy providers globally.

Jason Glass and John Clark, managing partner of CVC Growth Partners, will join Skybox's board of directors. CVC Growth has secured total equity commitments of $1 billion and invests primarily in North America and Europe, focusing on high growth software and technology­-enabled services businesses in a variety of sectors, including security, cloud computing, mobility, compliance, payments, financial technology and vertical software.

Speaking at the Hong Kong FinTech Week's panel discussion, Ms. Angel Ng, Consumer Business Manager, Citibank Hong Kong, shared her views on a thought provoking topic: "Robot or human -- who will be a better banker?"

Angel said: "We are getting better at the use of data analytics to create a better client experience and be able to recommend products or options based on a client's preference and risk appetite. Also, banks are exploring how to use technology to help predict client needs based on big data to help them answer their enquiries faster. At the same time, clients still need banks to provide value-added services with a human touch to fit their psychological needs especially when making critical financial decisions. Thus, the roles of robots and humans are not mutually exclusive."  As the first bank to adopt an open API architecture, she also sees the new approach bringing efficiency and creative ideas to the bank through the digital revolution.

Mr. Felimy Greene, Regional Head of Customer Franchise, Citi Asia Pacific, speaks at a panel discussion at the Hong Kong FinTech Week event. He believes it is important to adopt an open API architecture approach to collaborate with the FinTech community in a bid to position banking services exactly where clients need them.

Mr. Weber Lo, Citi Country Officer and Chief Executive Officer for Hong Kong and Macau, kicked off the first ever Citi Hong Kong FinTech Innovation Forum. Weber hopes the forum can serve as a platform for experience sharing and exchange of views on FinTech issues in Hong Kong. 

Close to 100 guests attended the first ever Citi Hong Kong FinTech Innovation Forum. The forum featured both external and internal speakers, including Mr. Charles Mok, JP, member of The HKSAR Legislative Council, Ms Morgan McKenney, Citi Asia Pacific Head of Cash Management for the Treasury and Trade Solutions, Mr. Nic White, Global Head of Fraud Prevention, Citi Commercial Bank, Mr. Jude Lee, Deputy General Manager, Lee & Man Paper Manufacturing Limited, and Mr. Bill Sims, Managing Director for Stroz Friedberg Hong Kong Office, to address some of the key opportunities and issues and share best practices. 

Avoka, the provider of frictionless digital customer acquisition for financial services, today announced an agreement with Mitek, a global leader in mobile capture and identity verification software solutions. This means Mitek’s suite of identity verification products will be fully integrated within Avoka’s Transact offering as part of a complete customer acquisition solution, now available to global customers under one single software license. The partnership, built on years of alignment between Avoka and Mitek, simplifies integration with banks’ own systems, speeding up time to market for implementation. 

The Mitek products will be available as options in the Avoka Transact® platform. In addition to Mitek’s Mobile Fill®, Avoka is adding Mobile Verify® and Mobile Docs™ to offer banks a seamless account opening process that empowers customer to complete an online application for consumer banking products, such as credit cards and loans, and fully verify their identity digitally, eliminating the need for a physical bank branch visit. This approach will significantly reduce application abandonment rates, an inhibitor to true real-time digital customer acquisition for banks. This technology also helps banks achieve KYC/AML compliance.

Built on the latest advancements in AI and machine learning, Mobile Verify® enables identity verification in real-time by authenticating government issued identity documents and matching the document photos to a selfie.  

Don Bergal, Chief Marketing Officer at Avoka, said: “We can now deliver a completely digital customer experience that includes identity verification without a branch visit, and that meets specific compliance requirements for North American and European markets – all through a single software solution. It’s our mission to help global banks deliver an outstanding customer acquisition experience, while ensuring that our clients are one step ahead when it comes to AML/KYC and fraud detection.”

Sarah Clark, SVP product, Mitek, added: “Adding our identity verification solutions to Avoka Transact will enable banks to offer a fully digital, compliant, real-time account opening experience. The combination helps banks get to market quickly with a user experience that appeals to millennials and other growth markets.”

Technology Services World -- FinancialForce, the number one customer-centric ERP vendor, today announced several new innovations and capabilities for its Professional Services Automation (PSA) solution, including enhanced forecasting, resource optimization, and scheduling tools. The new capabilities help organizations better serve their customers in the new services economy.

"Leading organizations are completely reimagining their businesses with FinancialForce's customer-centric ERP," said Lori Ellsworth, GM for FinancialForce PSA. "In our latest release we have delivered new Shift Management and Forecasting capabilities to give our customers greater control and predictability over their projects and the resources assigned to those projects."

FinancialForce Forecasting for Services Companies

The latest release of FinancialForce PSA enables services companies to forecast every part of their business with greater predictability, accuracy, and visibility. New forecasting and predictive capabilities include:

• Predictability
    - Real time forecasting combining both Services opportunities and projects under execution offering a single source of truth (available due to the seamless connection between CRM and PSA on the platform)
• Accuracy
    - Forecast based on how revenue will be delivered by applying "curves" to Opportunities and unscheduled backlog
    - Flexibility in forecast elements including Actuals, Expenses, scheduled assignments and milestones, resource requests and Backlog
    - Configurable weighing of forecast elements and forecast category definition
• Visibility
    - Roll up forecasts to Region, Practice and Group
    - Leverage both SalesForce reporting and Einstein Analytics
    - Build different forecast scenarios

This enhanced ability to forecast delivered revenue compliments the depth already offered in terms of resource forecasting, from the Opportunity through Project Delivery and our ASC606/IFRS15 compliant Revenue Recognition capabilities for services.

Caption: Easily aggregate forecast data across multiple factors and inputs-including services pipeline and projects-using Salesforce Einstein dashboard capabilities

FinancialForce Shift Management for Services Companies

FinancialForce PSA also now includes new Shift Management functionality, enabling organizations to rapidly adapt their delivery models with integrated scheduling tools across traditional projects and shifts. New capabilities include:

• Rapid creation of multiple team assignments using schedule templates
• Advanced team and individual shift planning and scheduling
• Fully integrated shift and project management using one platform
• Real time staff visibility, updates, and reporting

FinancialForce PSA Leads the New Services Economy

Purpose-built for today's services-driven organizations, FinancialForce PSA seamlessly unifies data across the entire customer experience, increasing utilization and billing rates, project profitability, revenue, cash flow, and employee and customer satisfaction.

Multiple independent industry analyst reports recently recognized FinancialForce as a leading solution in the PSA market, as it uniquely joins front and back office systems to support the entire services lifecycle from opportunities and delivery to billing and collections.

• In IDC's MarketScape: Worldwide SaaS and Cloud-Enabled PSA ERP
  Applications 2017 Vendor Assessment, FinancialForce was rated a Leader.
• According to the latest G2 Crowd PSA Report, FinancialForce PSA was rated as a Leader, based on customer satisfaction and market presence. G2Crowd also recently ranked FinancialForce PSA in the top 3 PSA Software Providers for Enterprise.
• Year on year FinancialForce customer consistently rank in SPI Research's Best of the Best Professional Services Organisations list
   

Lexmark, a global imaging solutions leader, today announced that its board of directors has unanimously selected Richard (Rich) Geruson as Lexmark president and chief executive officer, effective today. Geruson will also serve on the Lexmark board of directors.

An experienced technology leader, Geruson spent the last six years as chief executive officer and president of Phoenix Technologies, the premier provider of firmware and optimisation software for PCs, tablets and embedded Internet of Things devices. Prior to that, he was chief executive officer of Voice Signal, the pioneer of voice recognition software for mobile phones. He also held senior vice president and vice president positions at Nokia, IBM and Toshiba, and was an executive at McKinsey & Company.

Geruson was selected after an extensive search in which numerous highly qualified candidates were considered. He succeeds David Reeder, who left the company in June. In the interim, Lexmark was led by a management team consisting of Brock Saladin, senior vice president and chief revenue officer, and Allen Waugerman, senior vice president and chief technology officer. Saladin and Waugerman will remain key members of the Lexmark executive leadership team in their current roles, reporting to Geruson.

“We are pleased to welcome Rich to Lexmark,” said Mickey Kantor, chairman, Lexmark Board of Directors. “His track record of growing established technology businesses while ensuring profitability makes him an ideal choice to lead Lexmark to its next level of success.”

In addition to a bachelor’s degree in economics from La Salle University, Geruson has completed three graduate programs from the University of Oxford including a master’s degree, and a doctorate in economics. He was a member of the research faculty at Harvard Business School where he completed the book, “A Theory of Market Strategy,” and has served on numerous boards of public and private companies across three continents.

“Lexmark is a company with a long-standing reputation for excellence, from best-in-class products and solutions to a remarkable customer retention rate,” said Geruson. “I am proud to lead the team as we embark on our next stage of global growth.”

ACI Worldwide, a leading global provider of real-time electronic payment and banking solutions, today announced that Westpac New Zealand has completed a wide-ranging banking technology transformation, underpinned by ACI’s powerful and comprehensive Universal Payments (UP) portfolio of solutions. Westpac NZ, one of New Zealand’s leading retail, corporate and investment banks, has adopted UP real-time payments and fraud prevention solutions with Agile methodology and DevOps practices through ACI.

Westpac NZ, a long-standing ACI customer, is utilizing ACI’s UP Immediate Payments solution as its financial transaction hub, orchestrating payments across channels, networks and payment types, and settling to any clearing stream in real-time. Core payment processing is handled by ACI’s market-leading UP Retail Payments solution which acquires, authenticates, switches and authorizes financial transactions across multiple channels. The implementation allows Westpac NZ to make changes at speed and rapidly scale up operations to overcome market challenges.

“Building on our close collaborative relationship with ACI, it was logical to partner with them as we shifted to DevOps methodology and practices,” said Dawie Olivier, CIO, Westpac NZ. “Implementing ACI’s retail payments solution on Linux positions us to fully capitalize on the transformation of both our IT culture and technology stack. We can leverage capabilities across the solutions that are part of ACI’s Universal Payments Framework, and bring them together in a multitude of innovative products.”

The ability to detect fraud – and well as process payments – in real-time has also become a competitive differentiator for Westpac NZ, as the bank is the first tobenefit from the new capabilities of ACI’s UP Payments Risk Management solution. The solution’s scalable, high-processing transactional throughput delivers real-time adaptive machine learning and the ability to pattern match, so that fraud trends can be identified before they impact the bank’s customers or the bank itself.

“Westpac NZ is a shining example of how a long-established bank can transform its IT culture and operations to become nimbler, and supply customers with innovative solutions,” said Phillip Finnegan, General Manager, Pacific, ACI Worldwide. “ACI’s UP solutions provide the underlying technology, but it’s the company’s agile implementation approach that has made this a truly transformative project that has sped up time to market, enabled innovation, and – crucially – reduced the risk of operating in a real-time world.”