Specialized adapters promote straight-through-processing.

Firms are extending their middleware—the software that glues applications together—to deal with complexities of cross-border, multi-counterparty transactional products.

Rapid Addition, a provider of FIX and FAST related software solutions, offers its RA-ShortCut line of adapters that plug into Microsoft’s BizTalk middleware platform.

ShortCut for FIX “FIX- enables” BizTalk implementations, allowing them to send and receive FIX messages and to transform and normalize them between other protocols, such as SWIFT, XML and SQL.

“It is a specially written adaptor that FIX-enables Microsoft’s BizTalk middleware application,” Tony Corballis, CEO of Rapid Addition, told Markets Media.

The BizTalk adapter provides a quick-to-deploy answer for firms looking to streamline transactions from front-office trading platforms to back-office settlement systems or to integrate FIX and SWIFT messaging, the company said.

By relying on adapters for different kinds of communication, the BizTalk Server Engine supports a variety of protocols and data formats, thereby providing a messaging component that provides the ability to communicate with a range of other software.

BizTalk also supports creating and running graphically-defined processes called orchestrations. Built on top of the engine’s messaging components, orchestrations implement the logic that drives all or part of a business process.

“By allowing data from multiple systems, and in numerous formats, to be normalized and used in orchestrations visually, BizTalk speeds up development, making compliance with new directives quicker, easier, and less expensive to achieve,” said Corballis.

Rapid Addition’s products are taken up by firms who are seeking consistent, easy-to-use, trading technology, he said. The range of products covers FIX engines, BizTalk adaptors (for FIX and EMX), order routing software, risk filters, and browser-based institutional trading front-ends.

Third Financial Software, a provider of wealth management solutions, has selected RA-Shortcut for FIX BizTalk adapter, extending Microsoft’s BizTalk middleware platform, to provide seamless FIX capability for its OMS.

The RA-ShortCut adapter enables ThirdFin’s OMS (tercero), to perform simple transformation and normalization between multiple protocols, including FIX, EMX, SWIFT, FpML, and others.

“Embedding our offering into ThirdFin’s tercero OMS will extend its capabilities and allow ThirdFin’s clients greater flexibility in connectivity to their counterparties,” said Joe Pagano, global managing director – banking and capital markets at Microsoft.