Leading industry experts gather to discuss the fate of the traditional travel agent in the face of emerging technologies
DataArt will host its second Travel Technology Executive Panel on February 24 from 16.00 to 18.30 in central London.
The panel is organized in concert with TravelMole, The Online Community for the Travel and Tourism Industry, and will address the question of whether technology is responsible for the demise of the traditional travel agent.
The evening will be moderated by Graham McKenzie, Managing Director of TravelMole, who will lead the discussion on how online booking capabilities have allowed travelers to select, book and pay for the most complex itineraries without ever referring to an agent, causing a paradigm shift in the industry.
Confirmed speakers include:
DataArt and MP Capital, a London, UK based financial services consultancy, today announced that they formed a strategic partnership, which aims to deliver end-to-end technology solutions to the capital markets industry in EMEA. The partnership brings together the best of two worlds: global software engineering capabilities of DataArt, strengthened by years of delivering complex systems to capital markets clients, and an exceptionally strong team at MP Capital, focused on consulting, requirements, architecture and business process optimization.
“DataArt has long advocated multi-sourcing: a practice where clients pick the best vendors from the market based on their expertise in a particular task,” said Alexei Miller, Executive Vice President of DataArt. “Having two leading vendors establish an efficient direct working relationship makes it easier and, ultimately, more efficient for clients to work with both companies’ resources. We have been very impressed with the deep domain expertise, leadership and innovation that MP Capital teams have shown on our joint projects and are looking forward to a successful partnership.” Jointly, MP Capital and DataArt have the capability to take on projects very early in the process, often at the idea stage, and support it all the way through business case, requirements, design, development, QA and deployment. Given the fast changing environment at many financial institutions, MP Capital and DataArt will have access to each other’s pools of resources to quickly address evolving client needs that often require a combination of domain consulting and software skills, such as extending systems to support new security classes or introducing complex analytical domain-specific calculations.
“The strategy to combine resources through the partnership was in direct response to our clients’ demands, as two things were evident: the post economic crisis caused an increased focus on banks to deliver upon strategies quickly and without the burden of heavy investment in infrastructure and resources; and outsourcing within specialist areas of banking generally underperformed,” said Manish Patel, CEO of MP Capital. MP Capital and DataArt have been working together on client projects for the past 12 months and tested the relationship to assure that the resources and respective business cultures were compatible to bring their services to the market jointly.
DataArt announced expansion of its London office with the appointment of Mike Brett as VP of Business Development and Sales for Europe. In his new role, Mr. Brett will focus on further strenghtening DataArt's Capital Markets practice, which has grown by 15% in 2009.
While Capital Markets industry has stabilized and largely returned to growth, the need to do “more with less” is as strong as ever, and DataArt’s offering fits the niche for innovative, cost-efficient bespoke solutions in the areas of risk management, portfolio analytics, trade capture, settlement and reconciliation. Mr. Brett will work with both buy- and sell-side and will have responsibility to establish partnerships with leading technology, market data and analytics vendors in the space.
Prior to joining DataArt, Mr. Brett worked in business development for NET2S Capital Markets consultancy which specialized in Electronic Trading, Risk and Trade Management and Data Management. There he spearheaded a new ethical hacking division and Security Consulting practice, conrtibuting to strategic wins of new key clients. He also managed a series of industry seminars and corporate events for NET2S, securing the company's visibility on the market.
Mr. Brett holds a BA in Business Studies from the University of the West of England.
DataArt announced that it remained profitable in 2009, with two core areas of its strategic focus – advanced software engineering services for key industry domains - performing extremely well. DataArt's Financial Services / Capital Markets Practice grew 15% and added seven new clients, despite the ongoing industry-wide slump.
- Travel & Hospitality Practice, launched in early 2009, added five new clients, including Collette Vacations and EnjoyEngland.com, and created a stable pipeline of work, solidifying the new practice as the second best performing at DataArt. Among other notable 2009 achievements are DataArt's ongoing successful engagements with Fujitsu Computer Products of America, Passlogix, navmii and DPC Data. Overall, DataArt serviced over 70 of its clients and completed over 250 critical system deliveries in 2009.
DataArt was widely recognized by industry associations as one of the leading IT service providers: Global Services named DataArt a top 10 Emerging European Provider for the third year in a row, while IAOP named DataArt World's top 100 provider for the fourth consecutive year, also honoring the company as 2009 Best 20 R&D Company.
DataArt 2010 plans include continuous investment into its most successful areas of expertise - financial services, online travel and mobile solutions practices, and strengthening onsite presence in London, UK.
DataArt today announced it has developed a unique long-distance calling application for innovative UK based communications provider, Setel. Designed to reduce costs for international and satellite calling, the application is the first to let users call globally from mobile devices, with the same number and for the same cost as dialing via their fixed line carrier. Setel selected DataArt for this engagement because of its deep expertise in mobile application development.
Setel serves multinational clients in the shipping and maritime sectors where there’s high demand for reliable, cost-efficient international and satellite calls. The application DataArt developed enables Setel customers to make those calls as easily and affordably as a local one. Users can bypass the costs of using incumbent mobile operators and the hassle of phone cards and international codes. Setel is the only company offering this.
“The mobile application DataArt developed delivers a reliable, high-quality calling platform, with the ease of dialing locally from any geographic region,” said Sebastian Moore, Setel owner. “Our shipping customers rely on mobile communication to stay connected - whether they’re on land or at sea. The degree of accessibility that this application provides easily enables that.”
“With mobile quickly becoming the chosen communication medium among today’s businesses, demand for versatile global calling and mobile application development is growing exponentially,” said Denis Margolin, DataArt’s mobile practice leader. “DataArt’s deep mobile expertise enables Setel to further build upon the high-quality calling experience for its customers, cementing its role as an industry pioneer.”
Deployed to 1000 users in London in June, the product will be launched throughout Europe, the Far East and the Americas within the coming months.
