Advent Software: bringing the clouds to you

Date: 30 Mar 2012

Citywealth

Advent, a technology company who is well established and thought of globally in private wealth, have started thinking and their thinking has taken them into the cloud. Not just any old cloud but one that will make your business technology, cheaper, faster, easier to access, eventually app like and using a pay as you go model.
This is quite a turnaround for a company that has made a comfortable if not positively wealthy living from selling you licences. They are taking the move to multi platform which means many different devices like ipads, android, iphones, blackberry and your good old fashioned desktop seriously. So seriously they have turned their business model 360 degrees to stay ahead of the tech competition.
In the USA Advent have worked on their tech domination and Europe is but a question of time but before that happens they need you to understand what the cloud is. In reality a lot of people are already in the cloud in some way particularly if you have any sort of web interface with multi users clicking in from different locations but Advent are planning to take all your tech’ services and supply them to you by web interface ie like logging into your email. So far, some of your in house techies may have resisted the idea because they see their jobs disappearing. In reality whether in a cloud or not, you need someone to manage the technology but skills may need to be updated.
Martin Engdal, Director of Business Development and Marketing at Advent Software says “Despite this move, big banks still want our licences but investment managers and IFA’s are very keen to take on board web style cloud access because it is a lower cost entry point and is easier to use going forward. Mainly because they aren’t then dependent on a host of different tech companies.”
Advent bought out Black Diamond who do outsourced, web based, portfolio management last year in the USA which has given them a big market share there. Engdal says, “We have a new CEO and he has a three year vision to make Advent fully web or cloud accessible.”
Engdal added “UHNW’s want more access to online reporting as their children start asking about it. We are making these kinds of things possible and will do the work for our family office and investment clients. We are making this move because we think costs are going down in IT and the perpetual pricing is being replaced by pay as you go. We want to make life easier for business clients dealing with UHNW. Ultimately we will put different software companies and types of software in the Advent cloud. We think it is good for us in the long run because if tech life is easier for our clients then they will stay with us rather than reviewing suppliers every year or few years.”