MIDDLEWARE

4th Story integrates the Digipede Network with its trading strategy analytics. -- Digipede Technologies, the leading provider of distributed computing solutions for the Microsoft Windows platform, and 4th Story, leading developer of software for trading analytics, announced that 4th Story has integrated its trading strategy analytics with the Digipede Network for greatly increased scalability and performance. By Digipede-enabling its advanced trading analytics applications, 4th Story now offers brokers and hedge funds the ability to analyze and optimize strategies across a far wider set of trading opportunities. “Our customers demand performance,” said Steve Smith, CEO of 4th Story. “As brokers and hedge funds work with an ever-increasing flood of market data, 4th Story provides the strategy development and analysis tools that allow our clients to stay ahead of their competition. As trading strategies have become increasingly complex, and more compute and data-intensive, we recognized the need to support grid computing. We looked at a variety of options, but Digipede really stood out. Smith continues, “Our software runs on Windows, and we’ve adopted .NET as our development platform; Digipede’s .NET support is far superior to anything else we’ve seen and it has significantly reduced our development time. Without re-architecting our solution, we brought a grid-enabled product to market in a matter of weeks instead of months, allowing us to offer our customers the performance and scalability they need. As our mutual customers’ needs continue to evolve, we look forward to more collaboration with Digipede.” 4th Story customers can now access grid processing capabilities immediately by installing both 4th Story strategy analytics and the Digipede Network; the 4th Story suite is configured to take advantage of the Digipede Network automatically. 4th Story’s sophisticated strategy analysis and optimization is distributed across many machines within an enterprise and run simultaneously. The Digipede Network combines the processing power of those machines, resulting in vast increases in throughput for 4th Story software. Digipede Technologies CEO John Powers adds, "We’re pleased to be working with progressive ISVs like 4th Story. By combining the sophisticated analysis capabilities available in the 4th Story product suite with the scalability of the Digipede Network, brokers and hedge funds have the computing horsepower necessary to examine all kinds of new strategies. And these new capabilities are readily accessible – without the high expense and long consulting engagements associated with other grid projects.” The Digipede Network is available in two editions: the Digipede Network Team Edition meets the needs of small departments and labs that may only have up to 20 computers, while the Digipede Network Professional Edition supports large departments and enterprises with hundreds or thousands of desktops, servers, and cluster nodes across a network. Both editions include the Digipede Workbench, which is designed to shorten the learning curve so that users can become productive immediately. Through a familiar Windows user interface, users can run distributed computing jobs with ease. Wizards assist users with learning and using the system quickly, and powerful designers provide access to greater system functionality. No complex scripting is required. Availability and Pricing The Digipede Network is available now directly from Digipede Technologies. The Digipede Network Team Edition starts at $995 for a system licensing one Digipede Server and five Digipede Agents. The Digipede Network Professional Edition starts at $4,000 for a similar configuration. Additional Agents work with either edition, and can be licensed for $199 each. Current customers of the Digipede Network Team Edition can upgrade to the Professional Edition at a discount. Both editions of the Digipede Network include the acclaimed Digipede Framework SDK at no additional charge, providing unprecedented flexibility for grid-enabling enterprise applications. For additional information about pricing and configuration options, visit Digipede’s online store at its Web site.