LONDON and NEW YORK, NY -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 11/07/07 -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced the launch of two new IBM WebSphere Software products, each based on innovative technology from IBM labs, that enable financial markets firms to dramatically enhance the management of their complex financial market data requirements.

"The new IBM WebSphere Software combines best-of-breed performance in its ability to process millions of messages per second with latency measured in microseconds, along with unbeatable flexibility, resiliency and scalability," said Chae An, vice president, financial sector industry solutions, IBM Software Group.

The launch of IBM WebSphere MQ Low Latency Messaging Version 2.0 represents a significant expansion of the capability of IBM's WebSphere MQ family. WebSphere MQ Low Latency Messaging is the high-performance messaging component of WebSphere Front Office for Financial Markets which is now available for the first time as a separate product. Its introduction demonstrates IBM's commitment to providing innovative solutions to help address the explosion of data volumes across financial markets high velocity trading and analytic environments.

IBM WebSphere Front Office for Financial Markets Version 2.0 is an enhanced version of IBM's high-speed market data delivery platform. It offers improved performance, capabilities, and simplification. WebSphere Front Office enables financial markets firms to improve the management of their complex financial market data requirements across the enterprise.

Reuters is one IBM Business Partner that has already sought to harness the power of IBM WebSphere MQ Low Latency Messaging. Reuters recently announced the development of a new distribution component for their premier Market Data System, RMDS 6, the Multicast Distributor (MCD). The MCD will harness the power of IBM's Low Latency Messaging technology, and is designed as an ultra low latency device to enable the distribution of vast amounts of data from RMDS to thousands of client applications.

"We are pleased to be able to extend our multicast offering for RMDS 6 through our partnership with IBM. We have been working closely with IBM since our joint announcement earlier this year, and have been very pleased with the performance and new capabilities that have been added during the past few months. The performance and interoperability of WebSphere MQ Low Latency Messaging will give our clients even more messaging choices for RMDS 6 at greater speed than ever," said Peter Moss, Global Head of Enterprise Solutions, Reuters. "For the first time developers will be able to build new applications using Reuters Foundation API (RFA) on top of IBM messaging software to access content from RMDS 6 and to distribute it into other parts of their organizations. This is another example of our continuous commitment to put customers first. We look forward to working closely with IBM as they continue to enhance WebSphere MQ Low Latency Messaging and extending their great investment to our clients in other Reuter's systems."

WebSphere MQ Low Latency Messaging extends the WebSphere MQ messaging family as an additional transport designed for low latency, high-throughput message delivery. It adds to an expanding suite of transport protocols to address a wide range of messaging needs.

WebSphere MQ Low Latency Messaging has demonstrated very high throughput, one-to-many multicast messaging, which can deliver approximately one million 120-byte messages per second on Ethernet, close to three million 120-byte messages per second on InfiniBand, and more than 8 million smaller messages per second, all on common x86 servers. Testing has also measured very low latency of 30 microseconds for 120 byte messages delivered at 10,000 messages per second on InfiniBand or 61 microseconds on Ethernet (1)

IBM worked closely with Voltaire to achieve particularly outstanding results on Infiniband. Voltaire's MCE (Multicast Engine Libraries) and multi-service director-class Infiniband switches were shown to substantially reduce end-to-end application latency as well as gain linear scalability. The combination of WebSphere MQ Low Latency Messaging and Voltaire Infiniband can provide a new standard to address higher market data and trading volumes. Patrick Guay, Senior Vice President of Marketing, Voltaire, said: "In financial markets, microseconds can make the difference. We are pleased to be working with IBM to offer significantly higher throughput and significantly lower latency as proven by our performance tests."

In addition to pure speed and throughput, WebSphere MQ Low Latency Messaging V2.0 includes:

--  High speed, point-to-point communications using user datagram protocol
    (UDP) with positive or negative feedback reliability
--  Reliable unicast, which provides high speed point-to-point messaging
    over TCP
--  Flexible, fine-grained message filtering, traffic rate and congestion
    control, and high availability stream failover
--  Methods to monitor health and statistics, including latency, for both
    multicast and unicast
--  Support for a wide variety of platforms including Linux, Windows, and
    Solaris
    

WebSphere MQ Low Latency Messaging can extend the advantages previously available for the transport of market data within WebSphere Front Office. This not only offers greatly enhanced performance and capability for market data distribution, but can also be leveraged in a broad range of messaging systems within financial markets' middle- and back-offices for transaction and financial data, as well as industries with similar needs.

The updated version 2.0 of WebSphere Front Office offers:

--  Improved performance with throughput of over one million messages per
    second (1)
--  Point-to-point (unicast) transport capability to deliver market data
    to local or remote office clients
--  Upgraded platform support for both 32- and 64-bit Linux, with client
    support expanded to include 64-bit Linux and 32- and 64-bit Solaris
--  .Net API support, in addition to existing C++ and Java APIs
--  New entitlements GUI and easier integration with external entitlements
    systems
--  High availability enhancements including improved failover rules
    creation and high availability detection and synchronization
--  New logging and monitoring features that make it easier to select and
    access monitoring events.
--  Reduced hardware requirements to help decrease the time and skills
    necessary to deploy and configure the platform
    

WebSphere Front Office in combination with WebSphere MQ Low Latency Messaging now offers our clients new capabilities extending from front-office to middle- and back-office. This combination of performance and capability, backed by IBM's global services and support capabilities, can help to address the ever-increasing "need for speed" in the financial markets industry today and into the future.

Notes to editors:

(1) The stated performance numbers are based on measurements using standard IBM benchmarks in a controlled environment. The actual throughput that any application will experience may vary depending upon considerations such as message size, transmission rate, hardware platform, and network configuration. Therefore, no assurance can be given that an individual application will achieve the throughput or latency stated here. Customers should conduct their own testing. For more detailed performance information, please consult IBM.

About IBM:

For more about IBM go to www.ibm.com

About Reuters:

Reuters (www.reuters.com), the global information company, provides indispensable information tailored for professionals in the financial services, media and corporate markets. Through reuters.com and other digital properties, Reuters now also supplies its trusted content direct to individuals. Reuters drives decision making across the globe based on a reputation for speed, accuracy and independence. Reuters has 17,500 staff in 94 countries, including 2,400 editorial staff in 196 bureaux serving 131 countries. In 2006, Reuters revenues were £2.6 billion.

About Voltaire:

Voltaire is a provider of server and storage switching and software solutions that enable high-performance grid computing within the data center. Voltaire's integrated family of switching hardware and network virtualization software delivers the high-performance, intelligent backbone for grid computing. Leveraging the InfiniBand grid computing interconnect architecture, Voltaire solutions offer improved performance, utilization and scalability for its customers' high-performance grid computing needs. Voltaire solutions are available from major systems vendors and integrators. More information about Voltaire is available at www.voltaire.com or by calling 1-800-865-8247.

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IBM UK:
Bill Mew
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