14 DAY TRIAL // The BizTalk Accelerator for SWIFT has been SWIFT recertified for the seventh year on a row now, Microsoft revealed. The Redmond company used Sibos 2010, a global financial services forum, to announce that the BizTalk Accelerator for SWIFT received the SWIFTReady Financial EAI label for 2010.
This means that banks and corporate treasuries that are leveraging BizTalk Accelerator for SWIFT are using a solution which enjoys no less than seven consecutive years of SWIFT certification.
“Banks and other financial institutions are faced with a daunting challenge — a multitude of applications and systems that need to be integrated with customers, partners and external financial networks, including SWIFT,” said Karen Cone, general manager, Worldwide Financial Services, Microsoft.
“To address this integration complexity and to simplify adoption of mandated format changes, BizTalk Accelerator for SWIFT, an integral component of BizTalk Server, provides a highly extensible yet cost-effective implementation of financial messaging using the SWIFT format and network,” Cone added.
It is nothing short of a tradition for the software giant to dogfood its own products. And the BizTalk Accelerator for SWIFT makes no exception to this rule, being used internally by Microsoft’s own treasury function.
Still, there are a number of banks and corporate treasuries worldwide also taking advantage of the offering which is included in the license of Microsoft BizTalk Server 2010.
“Through its global alliance with SWIFT, Microsoft and its partners expand the market for SWIFT and financial services interconnectivity around the world,” added Elie Lasker, head of corporate market, SWIFT.
“Microsoft has a full understanding of the rapidly shifting payments environment, and our partnership is invaluable in helping to set industry standards, cut costs and complexity of banking and treasury operations.”
The Redmond company looks at BizTalk Accelerator for SWIFT as ushering in the next generation of payments and cash reporting.
This is possible, the software giant notes, with the native supports for ISO20022 XML schemas that the solution features.
Along with SWIFT and partner banks, Microsoft is laboring to define the standard implementation of ISO20022 XML, in order to streamline all transactions made over the SWIFT network.