Tick42 Launches Glue42 to Stick Applications Together

Glue42 allow applications developed by different companies or groups within a firm to work together and behave as one unit, and is part of ongoing efforts at the vendor to transform its products into solutions-based offerings.

The tool comprises four components of Tick42's existing product suite: a messaging client that provides the communication layer between applications; Sticky Windows, which allows different windows to dock together and behave as a single application on the front end; Tick42 Metrics, which allows firms to report on the availability and performance of applications; and finally, a configuration control tool for firms to configure how the applications actually work together.

Clients can use Glue42 to connect almost any desktop application, says Andrew Miller, head of business development at Tick42. For example, a client might be using Microsoft Excel, an in-house developed Level 2 market data viewer, and a Bloomberg terminal. "The Bloomberg terminal might be using Bloomberg codes, the spreadsheet is using Thomson Reuters RIC codes, and the in-house app is using another form of symbology. Right now, if you are looking at an instrument in Excel and you want to see what Bloomberg has to say about that and what the market is doing, it is usually a very convoluted process. If you don't know the codes, you have to look them up, type them in, etc., and if something else suddenly pops up and you want to change the whole thing, it takes a lot of time. With Glue42, all the applications can be glued together so that the user can simply right-click to show the same instruments in each application, avoiding copying-and-pasting or re-keying," Miller says.

The tool will also enable financial institutions to track and report on spreadsheet use within their organization, which is a key requirement of Basel III regulations such as BCBS 239, Miller says. "Glue42 gives banks and other firms oversight of what spreadsheets are doing, where they are being created, who opened them, and when and which instruments they are requesting. It provides a whole map of spreadsheets that are being used across the enterprise─and that's not something that most banks have," he adds.

Glue42 was developed in partnership with an unnamed tier-one investment bank that has already deployed the tool within its equities business, and is now rolling it out to its asset management arm. In addition, the tool is already in use at a number of tier-one sell-side institutions, but can also be used by smaller organizations and buy-side firms, as well as software developers that want to make the applications they sell to big banks more compatible.

Deployment times depend on the size of each organization and project, but the tool's configuration management component makes rollouts relatively straightforward. "We already have adapters that get deployed as part of the package, so it can be as simple as deploying an Excel add-in. It doesn't require big servers or hardware spend," Miller adds.