Quote Vendors On Parade At SIA Show: Everyone Has A Microcomputer Strategy

The Securities Industry Association provided a rare window into the mind of the modern quote vendor at its recent Communications/ Microcomputer conference in New York. The official title of the session may have been "The Information Workstation," but for the six quote vendors on hand the unofficial running theme was "here's what we're doing about/with the microcomputer."

The session came in two parts. "The New Competitors" featured presentations from International Marketnet, PC Quote, and Reuters, while "The Historic Suppliers" showcased ADP-FIS, Bunker Ramo, and Quotron. Reuters's curious status as a "new competitor" derives from the fact that this was a securities industry show and Reuters only recently announced plans to add data from the U.S. equities markets to its North American service.

For Imnet and PC Quote, "workstation" and "PC" are synonyms, but the others still find room in their systems for less intelligent data retrieval devices. Nevertheless, everyone has a PC strategy, which is an indication of customer expectations, if nothing else. Imnet marketing vice president Gerard Higgins noted that at an SIA show only two years ago, "you could have counted the number of PCs on one hand, and at today's show I think you would require a PC to count the number of PCs that are being demonstrated."

The voyage from a conventional cluster terminal system to one that integrates microcomputers will be a long one, and the four vendors advocating a mixed terminal approach are each at a different stage of the journey.

25 per cent of ADP's desk units today are micros, says Leo McBlain, vice president, sales, and that figure is expected to reach 50 per cent within the next two or three years. ADP "micros" are mostly Convergent Technologies Ngen workstations, although the company now also offers a totally IBM system, the FS Partner.

Quotron is "beginning to provide links to PCs" as a result of its new strategic alliance with AT&T, says George Grant, director, market planning. So far, the company has installed 300 new Q-1000 systems, which can support PCs through the AT&T Starlan local area network.

Bunker Ramo and Reuters are not quite as far along. Bunker just announced its "Supernet" approach (MTR, October 1985), and Reuters promises to supply expansion cards to let PCs emulate Reuters retrieval terminals. "Our objective is to relate Reuters information with long-established PC routines," says marketing manager Peter Thomas. The North American market for "workstations" of all stripes in the brokerage environment was generally estimated at about 200,000 by the end of the decade. Beyond that, the market for standalone systems is "unlimited," says Imnet's Higgins. PC Quote chairman Lou Morgan concurs. "Every broker is going to have to have a terminal at home," he says.