Evolving PORTIA Architecture
The PORTIA architecture team has been
hard at work to advance PORTIA's underlying architecture and technology, resulting
in a number of important improvements in PORTIA v7.0 and the soon to be released
v8.0.
Our strategy is to evolve PORTIA's technology and architecture in
parallel with the functional enhancements that we deliver in major PORTIA releases.
Our objective is to ensure PORTIA is leveraging emerging technologies and standards
in order to improve PORTIA in three core areas:
- Performance & Scalability
- User
Experience
- Integration & Workflow
Our initiatives for Performance
& Scalability have already yielded substantial improvements for PORTIA. We've
established a separate development team focused on Performance & Scalability measurement
and improvement and built a high-quality in-house performance lab for continuous
performance testing through our development cycle. In addition, we perform benchmark
testing in external labs prior to the delivery of each major PORTIA release. As
a result of these efforts, our v7.0 benchmark testing showed PORTIA easily handling
loads of 44,000,000 transactions over 750,000 portfolios with 300 concurrent users.
In our in-house testing of v8.0 performance, we are already seeing substantial
improvements as we optimize import processing - for example, 10 to 20 times improvement
in system performance for importing prices. Our lab testing of v8.0 has also shown
an average of 2 times improvement for transaction processing. Formal system performance
results from our v8.0 benchmark test, which is scheduled for May 2006, will be
published upon completion. We will continue to focus on Performance & Scalability
to ensure that PORTIA is optimized to manage volumes that are well beyond current
market needs.
- Built-in Integration: Thomson will integrate and maintain
the parts alleviating the heavy and costly I.T. burden.
- Security Master Consolidation:
Optimal and efficient workflow to eliminate dual entry.
- Real time integration
from TF OMS to PORTIA
PORTIA's User Experience began to evolve in v7.0,
and will continue through v8.0, via a standard User Interface framework built
over Microsoft .NET technology that gives not just enhanced look & feel and navigation,
but provides an "efficient workspace" model that drives operational efficiency.
Workflow that previously required a user to step through multiple screens is now
packaged into a single workspace, allowing users to complete a business process
workflow more efficiently, with fewer steps and less time. The v8.0 Corporate
Actions user interface screenshot below provides an example of these workflow
improvements. We'll continue to leverage this new UI framework for any new PORTIA
development, as we've done in v8.0.
With
a focus on enhanced Integration & Workflow in v7.0, we built an interface to provide
programmatic access to PORTIA over COM. In v8.0, we've refactored and extended
this interface to present native .NET access, enabling programmatic access over
both COM and .NET. In addition, we've opened up access at a very granular level
to PORTIA's underlying business logic and data augmentation in the v8.0 Calculation
Services API. This API will provide access to programmatically run any PORTIA
"calc" and return the results in an XML format for use in other systems, reports,
etc. Given these advancements in programmatic access - in addition to providing
both reporting and importing of XML as a standard format - we are very excited
about v7.0 and v8.0 for Integration & Workflow solutions.
The implementation
of our technology strategy to evolve PORTIA architecture is under way and we have
made significant advances in v7.0 and v8.0. We are planning for the specific technology
advancements you will see in releases beyond v8.0 and will continue with the major
themes we have made such a priority over the past 2 years. Look for more information
coming soon in Q2 on what you can expect after v8.
If you would like to
provide feedback relative to our technology strategy please contact your Account
Manager.