NEWS

WIRES

OTHER

OpTier's CoreFirst Wins 2008 Financial Innovation Award

NEW YORK, Nov. 21 /PRNewswire/ -- OpTier(R), the leader in Business Transaction Management(TM) (BTM) for the enterprise, today announced that it has received the 2008 Financial Innovation Award for Most Innovative Financial Services Technology Solution for its CoreFirst(R) product. Presented by the ifs School of Finance, the prestigious Financial Innovation Awards recognize financial services organizations and technology providers that demonstrate excellence in one of 22 categories.

OpTier's CoreFirst software topped five other technology vendor finalists in the category which recognizes the innovative development of a software package, application or tool set for the financial services industry. The company was one of more than 500 entrants and one of only three technology companies to receive an award at the 11th annual awards ceremony earlier this week inLondon. Other winners included global financial services organizations such as Barclays, Citi and MetLife.

"This year marks the eleventh anniversary of the Financial Innovation Awards, their longevity just one mark of their tremendous success in becoming firmly established as the leading awards for the financial services industry," said Chris Ray, director of marketing, events and alumni at the ifs School of Finance. "Our rigorous and objective judging process coupled with the fact that we received a record number of entries from organisations in the UK,Europe, the Americas andAustralia, means that any organisation that has won an award has truly excelled against global competition. Our congratulations therefore go to OpTier for their tremendous success in winning this award."

"It is an honor for OpTier to receive such high recognition and we are proud to be distinguished as one of the leading technology organizations in financial services," said Israel Mazin, CEO of OpTier. "Winning this prestigious award is testament to our close work with customers in the financial services sector to develop a world-class product that enables organizations to truly align IT with the needs of the business."

CoreFirst is the first and only product to deliver end-to-end visibility of all transactions, across all execution tiers within the IT environment all the time. With CoreFirst's BTM, companies can manage transactions at the point of invocation through to completion, regardless of physical or virtual computing architectures. By uniquely identifying all transactions, OpTier provides a real-time picture of every transaction in order to reduce outages, quickly isolate and repair problems, improve operational efficiency and reduce overall costs.

CoreFirst is particularly valuable for organizations in the financial services sector where failure to immediately meet service level agreements (SLAs) for transactions such as the execution of a trade or payment cut-off time can be extremely costly. CoreFirst also enables organizations to prioritize these transactions so that during times of increased activity, SLAs are still met.

"The need to better utilize IT resources in order to meet business requirements has never been more critical than it is in today's economy, where IT departments throughout the world are being asked to accomplish more with fewer resources," said Ori Mazin, head of worldwide sales at OpTier. "We have heard from Fortune 1000 organizations not just in the UK, but globally, that our CoreFirst software is meeting a critical need in the market that no other solution can fulfill in terms of transaction management."

About ifs School of Finance

The ifs School of Finance is a registered charity incorporated by Royal Charter. We provide financial education to financial services professionals the world over, and to consumers in the UK. The ifs School of Finance also provides a range of Continuing Professional Development services and executive education. With over 80,000 students in 100 different countries, the ifs School of Finance is one of the world's leading providers of financial education.

For further information, please contact Phil Hall (Head of Media, Public Affairs & ifs ProShare at the ifs School of Finance) on 07813004414 or e-mail phall@ifslearning.ac.uk.

About OpTier

OpTier(R) harnesses the power of real business transactions with its unique Business Transaction Management (BTM) software solutions. Our CoreFirst(R) product assures that business transactions flow smoothly within IT applications and infrastructure without bottlenecks or outages, for improved end-user experience and reduced cost. Our Active Context Tracking(TM) (ACT) technology delivers end-to-end visibility - of all business transactions, across all tiers, all the time - by continuously discovering the links between IT components and business services. It also prioritizes IT transactions and processes based on business needs, for true IT optimization. For more information, visit www.optier.com.

"Active Context Tracking", "Business Transaction Management", CoreFirst, OpTier and the tagline "Putting first things first" are trademarks of OpTier Ltd.

    Contacts:
    Lindsay Diamond                   Jennifer Barlow or Avi Dines
    OpTier                            Schwartz Communications, Inc.
    212-679-2700                      781-684-0770
    Lindsay.diamond@optier.com        OpTier@schwartz-pr.com

SOURCE OpTier