Source : Celent - January 2003
Headquartered in Paris and Delaware, with a total of 75 employees, Kyriba Corporation offers a Web-based corporate banking solution targeting large and medium-sized European financial institutions. In March 2000, the company received US$4 million in funding. A second round of financing worth US$10 million was completed in May 2001. Major investors include GRP Partners, American Express, Commerzbank, and Mangrove Capital Partners.
Founded in 2000, the firm officially launched its KyribaTI solution on November 2001. Kyriba did not start marketing actively in Europe until 4Q01, when they signed their first customer, Commerzbank in Germany. With valuable experience in the corporate finance area, the vendor´s solutions allows the bank´s corporate customers to support electronic banking, e-payment, cash forecasting, liquidity management, FX management, and collection processing in a multinational and multi-banking environment. Kyriba has developed a suite of applications that originates from corporate practices related to activities such as liquidity, payment, and treasury management.
The KyribaTI application features a Finance Application Library that allows banks to create differentiated solutions, called "on-line workspaces," based on their marketing requirements and segmentation. Kyriba´s application suite is built on a multi-tier, component-based architecture with a presentation tier (where authentication occurs), a business logic tier (authorization and user session management for cash management, payment management, administration, billing, process and connectivity management) and a database tier (Kyriba´s databases for data repository and reporting). The framework integrates with third-party solutions for bank communications and with legacy systems. It relies on open standard technologies such as J2EE, EJB components, XML, LDAP, and SQL databases.
The vendor´s strategy has changed in the past year. During 2000 and 2001, Kyriba licensed its solutions as an end-to-end service exclusively through a unique hosting provider (ASP). Though this model proved cost-effective, it faced significant challenges because of specific deployment requirements from banks and limited synergies with system integrators and outsourcing providers. Therefore, Kyriba now sells its KyribaTI licenses to financial institutions, which deploy the solution with the Kyriba-certified hosting provider of their choice. Kyriba markets its software through three different licensing options to meet its clients´ and partners´ deployment, service level, and budgetary requirements: perpetual licenses (unlimited duration), subscription-based licenses (a 3-year contract, with option of renewing or acquiring a perpetual license at the end of the period), and hosted licenses, the duration of which matches the duration of an outsourcing contract with a Kyriba-certified system integrator. This last option is only available through certified reselling partners. Pricing depends on the type of license chosen, the functional scope and the anticipated number of end-users. The entry price for a license is approximately ¤500,000. Implementation— including integration with the financial institution, content feeds, look and feel, portal design, and host site—may take 3 to 9 months depending upon the size, scope, and complexity of the project. In addition, Kyriba proposes optional services such as 24/7 application monitoring and troubleshooting, patch/update release management, platform tuning, and extended end-user help desk services (registration, support).
Kyriba´s products supports various Unix and Windows-based operating systems and uses Oracle as a main database. A number of third-party products have been incorporated into the KyribaTI solution including Omikron (a banking communication server for German protocols), Unisys (bill payment and check technology), and Sterling Software ("Connect Direct").
One financial institution is live with Kyriba´s Web-based corporate banking solution. The vendor mainly targets financial institutions in Europe and has not started marketing its solutions in the US and Asia yet. Kyriba´s solution serves corporate and small business banking clients. Kyriba provides good administrative functionality, allowing banks to track its corporate clients´ activities. The system´s monitoring console allows tracking of user activity, such as how much they are using the system, follow-up of transaction with third parties, and management of system resources needed to efficiently serve the end-users. In addition, the vendor provides good customer support throughout the client relationship. Future areas of extension of KyribaTI would be to add in-depth risk management measurement capabilities, e-payment, advanced functionalities using Web services, and compliance capabilities.
Future areas of extension of KyribaTI include in-depth risk management measurement capabilities, extensive e-payment tools, Web services, and compliance tracking and reporting. In 2003, Kyriba will enrich the service monitoring functions used by banks´ help desks to track financial flows and end-users activities. Kyriba will also extend its report library by providing report templates and tools in addition to the 60 templates currently available.
Contact:
Jennifer McCarthy
Vice President Marketing
Kyriba Corporation
jmccarthy@kyriba.com
(858) 764-2458
|
