The strategic alliance between Armanta and Intelliware was formed out of a successful large-scale deployment where the two companies worked closely for a major Canadian financial services client.  With this new relationship, Intelliware will be an implementation partner for Armanta’s Integrated Business Intelligence Platform in the Canadian marketplace.

This partnership provides a team of highly skilled resources throughout Canada offering implementation, customization, and other services related to Armanta’s powerful platform.

“Risk management is a key driving force in the Financial Services industry,” explains Andrew Pitt, VP Financial Services, Intelliware. “Our clients are consistently challenged with the complexity and diversity of the data and calculations available to them.  They need to move from a reactive to a proactive approach to risk management, which requires access to dynamic data and analyses. We are impressed with Armanta’s ability to address these big data challenges and look forward to continuing to forge a strong relationship with them.”

“Our partnership with Intelliware underscores our joint commitment to providing the highest quality of analytics products and services to companies in the Canadian market,” commented Peter Chirlian, Armanta CEO.  “Their strong technical skill set, strategic consulting model and wealth of system implementation experience will ensure rapid and successful deployments of our BI and analytics platform.”

Armanta and Intelliware are showcasing their products and services at the Financial Information Summit 2012 – booth 2 at the Hyatt Regency Toronto on King on July 12, 2012.

The Armanta Business Intelligence Platform

Armanta’s Integrated Business Intelligence Platform lets business users view and analyze enterprise data in real-time.  The Armanta platform is an integrated technology suite comprised of a rich user interface for reporting, analytics and visualization, a grid-based massively parallel in-memory engine, and a data virtualization and integration layer.

About Armanta

Enterprises around the world rely on Armanta’s Integrated Business Intelligence Platform to enable their overall end-to-end analytic processes.  Analytics-driven organizations can now fully leverage the entire scope of both on-premise and cloud-based data in order to instantly visualize complex analyses, evaluate all scenarios, and then act decisively.  Armanta brings live information and analytics of any scale directly to the fingertips of business users so they can “See the Big Picture™”.  Armanta focuses on next generation analytics in data-intensive industries such as:  financial services, insurance, retail, utilities, media and communications, health sciences, manufacturing, and government.

For more information about Armanta, visit www.armanta.com.

About Intelliware Development Inc.

Intelliware is a custom software, mobile solutions and product development company headquartered in Toronto, Canada. Intelliware is a leader in Agile software development practices which ensure the delivery of timely, high quality solutions for clients. Intelliware is engaged as a technical partner by a wide range of local, national and global organizations in sectors that span Financial Services, e-Health, ICT, Retail, Manufacturing, and Government.

Intelliware placed among the Top 5 Mobile Technologies Companies in the 2012 Branham300 report, the definitive listing of Canada’s Information and Communication Technology (ICT) industry leaders, as ranked by revenues.

For more information, visit www.intelliware.com and www.intelliware.mobi.

Armanta and Composite are showcasing the solution at this week’s Toronto Financial Information Summit where they are exhibiting in booth #2.  In addition, Armanta CEO Peter Chirlian is participating in a panel session on big data analytics and information delivery; Dan Yu, the company’s managing director, head of global sales is on a second panel session regarding preparing businesses for future alternative scenarios.  Armanta and Composite are currently teaming at several financial services firms in New York and Toronto.

Armanta’s Integrated Business Intelligence Platform lets business users view and analyze enterprise data in real-time.  The Armanta platform is an integrated technology suite comprised of a rich user interface for reporting, analytics and visualization, a grid-based massively parallel in-memory engine, and a data virtualization and integration layer.  The Composite Data Virtualization Platform provides a more agile, lower cost data integration approach that overcomes data complexity and disparate silos to provide the complete, high quality and actionable information that agile businesses require.

“True enterprise risk management requires proactive analysis on a descriptive data model that enables risk managers to ask an iterative continuum of questions and see results interactively in seconds, not hours, days or weeks. The ability to achieve this can’t be accomplished with static data and pre-defined reports,” said Chirlian.  “Our partnership with Composite will extend our data integration capabilities to provide risk managers with dynamic access to all data so they can succeed in ever-changing market conditions.”

Added Composite Software CEO Jim Green, “The recent global financial crisis had exposed the critical need for better enterprise level risk management.  Armanta’s risk management expertise and analytic engine are unparalleled in the financial services industry,” Green said.  “The Armanta/Composite Risk Management Solution helps enable advanced computations and scenario analysis that today’s financial services firms require.”

Composite’s data virtualization suite combined with Armanta’s enterprise risk management platform improves analysis for risk managers by providing:

• An end-to-end view of data that enables proactive analysis by delivering complete data management, complex calculation, scenario analysis, and final results publication capabilities.
• “What if” scenario analysis and sandbox features which allow hypotheses to be tested in a safe environment without impacting others.
•  Rich visualization with the ability to define report formats – tables, graphs, etc., within a dashboard, using a flexible drag-and-drop paradigm.  Down-stream results are automatically updated and displayed.
• “Anywhere, anytime” data accessibility that delivers accurate and consistent risk management and analysis across all asset classes.

Armanta CEO Speaking on Big Data Analytics

On Thursday, July 12, at 2:25pm ET, Armanta CEO Peter Chirlian is participating in a panel discussion at the Toronto Financial Information Summit entitled, “Thinking Big on Data Storage and Analytics”.  Panelists, including industry leaders from State Street Bank and Bank of Montreal, will debate whether financial services firms have a big data problem; how to streamline architectures to meet the demand for scalability and growth; breaking the trade-offs between data volume capacity and performance; how third-party cloud solutions and internal data virtualization projects might help; and which areas can firms best apply cloud computing to maximize returns.  In addition, at 4:10pm, Dan Yu, Armanta’s managing director, global head of Sales is on a panel entitled:  “Recess or Rebound for the Global Economy? Preparing your Business for Alternative Future Scenarios.”

About Composite Software, Inc.

Composite Software, Inc. is the data virtualization performance leader.  Backed by a decade of pioneering R&D, Composite Software is the data virtualization gold standard at 10 of the top 20 banks, six of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies, four of the top five energy firms, major communications providers and the world’s largest IT organization, the US Army. These and hundreds of other global organizations rely on Composite to fulfill their ever-changing information requirements with greater agility and lower costs. Composite Software is privately held, with corporate headquarters in San Mateo, CA. To contact Composite, please call (650) 227-8200, visit us on the Web at http://www.compositesw.com, or follow us on twitter http://twitter.com/compositesw.

About Armanta, Inc.

Enterprises around the world rely on Armanta’s Integrated Business Intelligence Platform to enable their overall end-to-end analytic processes.  Analytics-driven organizations can now fully leverage the entire scope of both on-premise and cloud-based data in order to instantly visualize complex analyses, evaluate all scenarios, and then act decisively.  Armanta brings live information and analytics of any scale directly to the fingertips of business users so they can “See the Big Picture™”.  Armanta focuses on next generation analytics in data-intensive industries such as:  financial services, insurance, retail, utilities, media and communications, health sciences, manufacturing, and government.  For more information about Armanta, call +1-973-326-9600 (in the US toll-free 866-320-6039) or visit the company’s website at www.armanta.com or follow us on twitter http://twitter.com/armantainc.

Prior to joining Armanta, Loomba was CMO at ParAccel, a big data analytic platform provider. Earlier, he was vice president, marketing and business development at Seagate Technology where he managed Seagate’s global $1B consumer and small-medium enterprise storage solutions business.   Before Seagate, Loomba held a variety of executive roles at Cisco Systems for over a decade and also was a management consultant with Booz Allen and Hamilton.

Also joining the Armanta executive team is Dan Yu as managing director, global head of sales.  Yu brings more than 20 years of experience in sales and marketing strategy to his role and has worked with some of the largest financial services and asset management firms in the world.  Prior to Armanta, Yu was head of Americas sales for RealTick, a financial technology firm.  He has also held a number of senior positions at Lava Trading / Citigroup, including Head of Business Development for LavaFlow ECN.

“Historically, traditional business intelligence ‘stack’ solutions have struggled to meet the technical and analytical challenges required for real-time analytical problems,” said Shawn Rogers, Vice President of Research, Business Intelligence & Data Warehousing for Enterprise Management Associates.  “Armanta provides a high performance business intelligence platform that is designed to leverage real-time data sources at massive scale while supplying end users with an environment designed for complex analytic scenarios.”

Added Loomba, “I am pleased to join the Armanta executive team and look forward to building on our foundation in the financial services markets as we expand into new verticals where we will  address the needs of enterprises seeking nimble analytics and real-time analytical results.”

“Tarun’s wealth of leadership skills, talent and industry contacts will serve Armanta well as we continue to extend our technology into new markets,” said Armanta co-founder and CEO Peter Chirlian.  “His specific knowledge of the enterprise market will enhance the strategic skill set of our executive management team.”

The Armanta Business Intelligence Platform

Armanta’s Integrated Business Intelligence Platform has been designed from the ground up to provide enterprises with the ability to implement end-to-end analytic processes that meet the needs of business users, analysts and IT professionals.  Armanta’s platform is comprised of a rich user interface for reporting, analytics and visualization, a multi-tier grid-based massively parallel in-memory engine, and a data virtualization and integration layer.

About Armanta

Enterprises around the world rely on Armanta’s Integrated Business Intelligence Platform to enable their overall end-to-end analytic processes.  Analytics-driven organizations can now fully leverage the entire scope of both on-premise and cloud-based data in order to instantly visualize complex analyses, evaluate all scenarios, and then act decisively.  Armanta brings live information and analytics of any scale directly to the fingertips of business users so they can “See the Big Picture™”.

Armanta focuses on next generation analytics in data-intensive industries such as:  financial services, insurance, retail, utilities, media and communications, health sciences, manufacturing, and government.  For more information about Armanta, call +1-973-326-9600 (in the US toll-free 866-320-6039) or visit the company’s website at www.armanta.com.

March 10, 2008
By Tom Groenfeldt

At large fund management firms, the burden of integrating computer systems, data flows and applications often falls on the portfolio manager. Morristown, N.J.-based Armanta aims to change that through a combination of applications and a development framework for automating business processes, letting portfolio managers concentrate on investing.

A fund manager needs to understand risk, rebalance his portfolio, monitor trades and view holdings across several portfolios, explains Peter Chirlian, CEO of Armanta and former managing director and head of the financial strategies group at Prudential Global Asset Management. Typically, a manager needs to access systems from separate silos for each task, and getting them to work together is a challenge.

Armanta technology sits on top of a customer’s existing infrastructure, speeding implementation. It pulls data from proprietary systems and external sources into an abstraction layer and then populates a live cache that can run across computers in multiple locations for high performance. Business automation is provided by moving data in two directions–as market conditions change, a firm can modify its models and change its portfolios, either through reports that traders can act on or direct links to order management systems (OMS).

Scalability

When the CTO of one of the largest European pension fund managers set up its American investment arm, he wanted a flexible system that could provide reporting and decision support. “One thing for sure is that tomorrow will be different from today,” he says, “and we needed a technology structure that would allow us to start with current needs and provide the flexibility to enhance it to meet future needs.”

After meeting with Armanta and outlining the fund’s requirements, the CTO asked for a proof of concept, which was delivered in six weeks. It “would have taken any other company half a year, if they could have accomplished it at all,” he asserts.

One customer wanted to improve views and controls over its hierarchical portfolios, which owned chunks of other portfolios in the firm, and structured products, where standard accounting systems took no account of the many underlying synthetic exposures. Armanta built in three months a system that can look into the portfolios and structured products, run analytics, update pricing with real-time data feeds and send data up and down as prices, allocations or market conditions change.

A technology director at a leading asset management firm, which would not permit him to be named, needed to replace an aging system built on technology that was being phased out. He wanted a new application that would replace the functionality of the old without two years of internal development time.

“All of our portfolio managers on the fixed-income trading floor are managing their portfolios in relation to a benchmark and the data we build out in our nightly processing,” he explains. “We have quant models that we run across our holdings to allow portfolio managers to see how their portfolio is constructed in relation to the benchmark or index. They can get a sense of how they stand in health care or tobacco and they can drill up and down their portfolio in different dimensions and choose from high level to individual level. They can also aggregate information, or weight it based on algorithms such as market value or accrued interest.”

He admits his firm has unusual requirements. Some fund managers run multiple funds and need very fast multi-fund views. “We found vendors who were very good at risk, but when it came to the user experience and responsiveness of the application we had a hard time,” he says.

Armanta sits on top of any kind of data and allows users to manipulate it. “It is very flexible in how it displays data, and it is very extensible,” adds the technology director. “Their product is well thought out. For the things it doesn’t do out of the box it provides a very easy mechanism to add that functionality. And it doesn’t make any assumptions about how you run your business.”

Build vs. Buy

Eric Kaplan, CTO of seven-year-old Armanta, says that in addition to freeing up development time for more value-added work, firms do better buying third-party solutions such as Armanta’s because they have been created to meet more than one requirement at one firm. A company with one problem to solve might view Armanta as overkill.

“But if they build their own solution and then their business changes, they realize they should have bought,” says Kaplan. “As a software company, we have to be flexible and generic so we can handle the requirements of a lot of different customers; when firms build their own, they often lock themselves in down the road.”

One Armanta user recently wanted to track its portfolios at the strategy level. If a manager thinks technology will outperform mortgages, he might decide to overweight technology. But he can also allocate his portfolio in multiple ways–an IBM holding might be 80 percent allocated to a technology strategy and 20 percent to a global strategy. Armanta delivered the ability to create strategy views in a week.

“It is a very unique product in the market,” says the CTO of the European pension fund manager. “It has kept its flexibility even as it has matured into more of a solution.”

A director at a large European bank says his portfolio managers are getting more information because of Armanta, which allows them to “scrutinize every piece of data that comes to their desktops,” he says. “You can look at it down to the detail of what you physically own, like a corporate bond, and find the internal rating and decide if you want to be overweight, under or neutral. You can also look at any summary level you want, how much concentration of your portfolio is broken out by asset classes–munis, corporates, asset-backed, mortgage-backed securities and derivatives.”

He says the firm’s managers find it as flexible as Excel and like its ability to manipulate data. The system includes a feature called Sandbox where users can run what-if analytics without influencing the production programs. When users take data from models and make a change in holdings, the change flows through the system in real time with full audit trails.

“During the sales process, we ask prospects for their biggest business process automation headache,” says Armanta’s Chirlian. “Then we demonstrate how quickly and easily we can provide a solution. For example, each customer thinks differently about exposures. They might be very quantitative–mortgage exposure in terms of past delinquencies. We don’t lock them into anything.”

Due to potential clients’ very particular requirements, the Armanta system’s components and framework deliver perhaps 80 percent of what a firm needs and makes it relatively easy to build the remainder.

When a user decides to optimize a portfolio by a certain percent, the system can drill through the holdings to implement a workflow, show what trades are needed, and send them to the OMS. “Typically the human becomes the integrator,” says Chirlian. “Now when he types something into his Bloomberg we allow it to be seamlessly integrated with his operations. We like to understand what a client wants and then we can tailor the product.”

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Hyatt Regency Toronto on King
370 King Street West
Toronto, ON M5V 1J9, Canada

Armanta is a Panel Sponsor:

2:25pm  Thinking Big on Data Storage and Analytics

• Do firms in the financial industry have a so-called “Big Data” Problem?
• Streamlining architectures to meet the demand for scalability and growth
• Breaking the trade-off between data volume capacity and performance: to what extent can third-party cloud solutions and internal virtualization projects help?
• Increasing your options: which areas can firms best apply cloud computing to get best returns?
• From data to software to platforms: deciding what to outsource to keep costs low

Moderator:

Neil McEvoy, Founder and President, CLOUD BEST PRACTICES NETWORK
Peter Chirlian, Chief Executive Officer, ARMANTA 
Brant Arseneau, Managing Director & Head of Electronic Trading Capabilities Group, BANK OF MONTREAL
Chris McCarthy, Senior Vice President, STATE STREET

Armanta handles a massive scale of data and runs calculations across a large grid of computers in a matter of seconds. Users can drill down through scenarios and visualize them to understand the effect of a change on individual business units, trades and holdings. When they make a change in one report, all related reports are updated with the same information. Importantly, they do not have to queue up for IT resources each time they want to perform a novel analysis or look at their information in a different way. With Armanta, financial institutions are well-positioned to succeed in today’s challenging environment.