Charles River Releases IMS Version 8

Securities Industry News

Combines Functionality, Integration, and Performance with Unmatched Service and Support

Burlington, MA, London, Melbourne, and Singapore - Charles River Development, a market-leading provider of software and services to the global investment management community, today announced the recent release of Version 8 of its front- and middle-office software suite, the Charles River Investment Management System (Charles River IMS). The release delivers Phase Three of the firm's previously announced technology strategy. Version 8 represents the completion of the conversion of the system to N-Tier distributed processing and the three-quarters mark in delivering new Microsoft C# .NET application windows. It also contains hundreds of functional enhancements for portfolio managers, traders, compliance officers, and settlements personnel at institutional, hedge fund, and wealth management firms.

"In 2005, Charles River has signed 54 new client contracts to date, the majority of which based their decision on our superior technology platform and all that Version 8 offers, as well as our company's leadership position in implementation, client support, and relationship management," said Peter Lambertus, president and CEO at Charles River. "Charles River IMS delivers the most modern architecture and maximum performance of any order management system on the market today and our Version 8 truly sets a new industry benchmark for functionality, integration, and performance. Our new technology is standard, industry-accepted, and proven. It is already deployed at numerous client sites - from hedge fund managers with minimal infrastructure to large multi-national and multi-asset investment managers."

Charles River IMS is undergoing a phased technology evolution to a distributed, service-oriented architecture (SOA) that encompasses best-of-breed technologies such as Java, J2EE, Microsoft .NET, and Web services. The result is a comprehensive investment management platform that offers superior performance, a wide variety of deployment options, unmatched flexibility and functionality, and maximum scalability regardless of long-term technology-trends. "Clients will appreciate the rapid application development that results from our use of this new technology," said Robert Hathaway, vice president of engineering at Charles River. "Our development team can now deliver in days what previously might have taken weeks to develop."

"Charles River IMS is open and flexible - easily integrated with internal and external applications," said Rick Enfield, director of product management, Charles River. "In Version 8 we added over 600 Web services, 200 of which are exposed for client use and cover the entire order life cycle. These Web services provide a base for enabling many new capabilities - for example, our ComplianceAnywhere(tm) functionality uses our Web services to bring the power of Charles River Compliance to a handheld device. Version 8 also contains a number of significant new features in modeling, order generation and fixed income, derivatives and foreign exchange trading. Our electronic trading capabilities across all asset classes are second to none."

Charles River IMS is an integrated software suite for portfolio management (Charles River Manager), order management and electronic trading (Charles River Trader), and real-time compliance monitoring (Charles River Compliance). Version 8 marks the introduction of a fourth component, Charles River Post-Trade, for the centralized management of trade matching, confirmation, and settlement workflow. Other Version 8 features include:

· A new module for portfolio modeling;

· Extensive support for Foreign Exchange trading;

· Support for multi-leg derivative transactions;

· Expanded electronic trading capabilities across all asset classes including a new, embedded CameronFIX engine and full FIX 4.4 support for all instruments;

· Significant advantages for hedge fund managers including support for P&L and numerous prime broker interfaces;

· Delivery of ComplianceAnywhere, a secure and flexible application for the wireless world that allows users to monitor, manage, and resolve investment compliance breaches in real-time, anywhere in the world, wherever their business takes place.

Version 9, the final phase of the Charles River IMS technology migration, is well underway as evidenced by the firm's demonstration of Version 9 functionality at its Sixth Annual Client Conference in September 2005. "We conducted parallel development processes for Versions 8 and 9. We completed the back-end and middle tier conversion in Version 8 and Version 9 represents the conversion of the few remaining product screens to Microsoft C# .NET," said Hathaway. "We are maintaining a similar, yet enhanced, look and feel - which conforms to Microsoft Windows standards - so there is no need for user retraining."

About Charles River Development

Charles River Development is a market-leading provider of software and services to 185 investment managers in the global mutual fund, banking, pension, hedge fund, wealth management, and insurance industries. The Charles River Investment Management System is a comprehensive front-to-middle-office software suite for all security types that includes Charles River Manager for portfolio management and modelling; Charles River Trader for order management and electronic trading; Charles River Compliance for real-time pre-trade and end-of-day compliance; and Charles River Post-Trade for the centralized management of trade matching, confirmation, and settlement workflow. The system incorporates real-time FIX trading via the Charles River Network, a reliable, secure, private financial network based on the BT Radianz global financial extranet.

Charles River IMS features a modern, proven, N-Tier service oriented architecture (SOA) that is highly scalable and supports continuous 24x7 operations. Charles River combined state-of-the-art (Java, Microsoft .NET and Web services) and industry- standard technologies to ensure Charles River IMS is open, flexible, scalable, functionally rich, and easy-to-use. Message-based APIs and exposed Web services facilitate rapid systems integration.

The company offers many services to complement its software including implementation services and managed services (hosted and remote application management). Founded in 1984, Charles River maintains headquarters in Boston and primary offices in London, Melbourne, Paris, and Singapore.

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