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NEW YORK – Microsoft has released a new Financial Services Office Business Applications Component Library.
At the sixth annual Microsoft Financial Services Developer Conference, here, Microsoft released its new OBA (Office Business Applications) component library to help financial services organizations build applications on the 2007 Microsoft Office System.
Microsoft’s last major update of its OBA platform was at its Microsoft Office System Developer Conference in San Jose, Calif., in February, where the company announced a new OBA sample application kit and an OBA composition tool kit. At that February conference, Microsoft also announced new OBA library components for financial systems.
However, at the financial services conference here on March 12, Microsoft released new components and delivered new functionality with the Financial Services OBA Component Library. The library consists of more than 90 components that serve as common financial methodologies and standard Web service protocols.
Chris Bryant, senior product manager of Office Platform Strategy at Microsoft has described OBAs as composite applications, built on the 2007 Microsoft Office system, that use the interfaces of Microsoft Office products and connect to other Microsoft technologies like Microsoft SQL Server or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server
In the case of financial systems, OBA solutions model how people work day-to-day within financial services firms by integrating components with existing workflows, said Mike Walker, architecture strategist for the Worldwide Financial Services Group at Microsoft. The OBAs are also aimed at reducing training efforts and at trimming development time, he said.
“The Financial Services OBA Component Library is a comprehensive set of OBA components that span across key areas in the banking, insurance and capital markets industries,” Walker said. “The components are built in a composite way. This enables customers to assemble OBA components into existing or new business processes.”
The OBA for banking and the insurance industry
Moreover, the Financial Services OBA Component Library provides interoperability through Web services and industry standards, such as the Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development, Financial Information eXchange and Interactive Financial eXchange, Microsoft officials said.
For banking, the OBA component library provides a lending reference architecture, common online banking components for consumer portals and broker commission scenarios, Microsoft said. For the insurance industry, the library provides claims processing, channel sales, and life and annuity scenarios leveraging Microsoft Silverlight and SharePoint Server for a rich user interface. And for capital markets the library provides structured product scenarios using Office Open XML, the company said.
Meanwhile, Walker said of the financial OBA library components: “These components are built as composite OBA components. This makes these components -composable’ in a mashups fashion. Since the components are driven by industry scenarios they address discrete areas of functionality in financial services business processes.”
Also, the components fit into an end to end set of business capabilities and processes, Walker said. In addition, the components are all built on industry standards, “which makes these interoperable not only at the protocol level but at the business process level,” he said. “These components break down the classic interoperability barriers. OBAs show customers new integration patterns and new uses of line-of-business information.”
Microsoft’s Financial Services group helps financial firms leverage technology to amplify the impact their people can deliver to drive business success, company officials said.