Microsoft renews commitment to SWIFT and achieves SWIFTReady Financial EAI Label for 2008.

VIENNA, Austria, Sept. 15 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Microsoft Corp. today announced at Sibos 2008 that it is signing a global partnership agreement with the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Transactions (SWIFT). The announcement signifies a new, higher level of close cooperation between the organizations, under which they will work together to deliver deep industry value and simplify SWIFTNet implementation for customers using Microsoft technology. It is a mutual, commercially based agreement between the organizations and will open further opportunities for financial service providers and midsize to large corporations to quickly and easily connect to SWIFT.

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'The dynamics of financial messaging are changing as institutions look toward technology as a competitive differentiator,' said Amanda Westwood, global head of SWIFT's customer service division. 'SWIFT customers demand flexible messaging platforms that are cost effective to implement and integrate with their existing systems. The continued work Microsoft does to support SWIFTNet integration and SWIFTSolutions partners goes even further toward helping expand these solutions for our customers both within organizations and across boundaries. We expect our global partnership to promote additional adoption of SWIFT connectivity and SWIFTSolutions in the future.'

The development of a SWIFT partner ecosystem will be an important aspect of the global partnership. Microsoft is providing a solid and highly secure foundation on which an expanded set of trusted industry partners can build and implement solutions for SWIFT and deliver stronger solutions for customers. It will also increase the choices available to customers, enabling them to better compete through more flexible and scalable financial messaging solutions.

As a respected voice in the area of payments technology, and demonstrating its further commitment to both SWIFT and its international partner ecosystem, Microsoft has, for the fifth year running, achieved the SWIFTReady Financial EAI Label for 2008 for BizTalk Accelerator for SWIFT, which will be included in Microsoft BizTalk Server 2009.

'We are constantly listening to our customers' feedback, and what we're hearing from the financial services marketplace today is that they are looking to Microsoft, as a respected leader in enabling payments solutions, to provide increased flexibility beyond core SWIFT offerings,' said David Vander, worldwide managing director of Banking at Microsoft.