Symphony, the messaging tool poised to rival Bloomberg, is set to be released tomorrow . The startup has raised capital at a $1 billion valuation from various investors including Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Bank of America and other financial services firms. Here is the description of Symphony on Goldman Sachs website:
Symphony is a Goldman Sachs-led industry initiative to build a cloud-based, compliant platform for instant communication and content sharing that connects market participants securely. Tailored to the needs of the finance industry, it will let companies bring all digital communications onto a single platform, allowing for more robust interactions between employees and clients. The platform is based around an open source business model that is cost-effective, extensible and customizable to suit end-user needs.
Symphony is hoped to be a replacement for Bloomberg’s messaging product because many banks don’t trust Bloomberg with the security of their data.
Big banks once worried about Bloomberg reporters tracking their staff through their terminal log-ins. Others worry about Bloomberg’s data sharing policies once they’re contacted by investigators. Goldman Sachs is in the process of moving to Symphony for its messaging and JP Morgan is rolling out Symphony in phases, sources said.
What’s your thoughts on the viability of such software? It seems like a real threat to the Bloomberg messaging system because so many banks have invested in it, and according to the BI article, many top investment banks have been using Symphony in limited capacity for almost a year now. But how big of an impact can Symphony make to the industry? Is Bloomberg's position damaged after the release?
I saw this article and thought it was pretty dumb. Maybe being on the desk is more mindless than I imagined (or they just have research do all of their work) but do people not use bloomberg for its data or analysis? This product only replaces the messaging feature which seems to have an overstated importance in the article. You still need something to give you trading / financial data.
Your comment shows a lack of understanding of one of the key values of bloomberg - messages, aka runs, and IB. This is a major component to the high switching costs of bloomberg.
We'll have to see how widespread early adopters are.
This is a much bigger deal than most people realize. The sell side alone joining doesn't mean much as they will still have to use whatever the buyside prefers, but big AM firms like BlackRock joining in are what Bloomberg should be worried about. I heard BlackRock is going to mandate most communication go through an open, secure network like Symphony in 5 or so years.
Even if Symphony isn't the platform to do it, this is the beginning of the end for Bloomberg messaging. Besides the obvious cost savings, banks really got spooked by the whole snooping scandal. Bloomberg's competitors also bought in (Markit, TR, FactSet, CapIQ, Tullett, Dow Jones) as any alternative will weaken their grip on the market.
Again, I'm not getting how this is a "bigger deal" than people realize. Nobody is paying Bloomberg however many thousands a month it costs for their messenger feature are they? Presumably people are paying that for all the real-time data it has.
Its all about making it harder to get evidence. If you control the messaging systems you keep a much tighter leash on the information leaking out. You would be amazed at the number of investigations that are triggered by a reporter getting a bit of information and latching onto it and digging for a story.
Wall St is a small world, and how it's received is crucial to its success.
Spoke to a GS trader, they already use it and he hates it. So I'm skeptical for now. But then again, if all the big guys start using it, everyone will adopt it. We'll see
For something to disrupt Bloomberg that is so much a part of daily business, you need Symphony to be a "game changer". From what i heard, it is not. In tech today it is go-first, go-big or go home. (Google+ anyone??). Once a lead system is as well established it is extremely hard to disrupt that position. Albeit the big name backers
Bloomberg when you are on the sales side is shit - all your info is accessible and not secure anymore. Every bank realises this. If Symphony does exactly the same thing without the issue of bloomberg owning the data you are in a much better place. It takes very little to disrupt a dinosaur. If there is some complaints at first from traders it's the same complaints you got when bloomberg updates its UI. Everyone bitches and eventually gets along with it. Bloomberg is has been if major banks will adopt this messaging system.
Stop thinking about bloomberg as a be all and end all. Bloomberg has a major issue. This will fix this issue.
In regards to security... if people haven't figured out yet that everything they do on a computer is going to be monitored, I can't help them. Period. End of story. If you are really concerned with company communications being tracked, build your own internal system that is housed entirely on site or something and even then you are still at risk of being hacked, or leaked, etc. I have a crazy idea to combat that... don't do anything stupid or at least don't do it over IM or messaging systems.
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