Data Exchange Switches To VAX/VMS Platform In Bake-Off At MSAM

Data Exchange Inc. has abandoned plans to pitch a UNIX-based version of its DX/V portfolio management system at Morgan Stanley Asset Management (MSAM) in New York, where the incumbent vendor is involved in a bake-off with rival Integrated Decisions Systems Inc. Instead, Data Exchange will pitch a DEC VAX/VMS version of DX/V, but later offer MSAM UNIX compatibility through a port of its system to Sybase Inc.'s proprietary relational database management system (RDBMS), which can run in a number of operating system environments, among them UNIX.

Data Exchange's decision to switch from Sun/UNIX at MSAM reverses the vendor's long-running efforts to run its system on that platform. The vendor is now engaged in the port to Sybase's RDBMS.

MSAM has been testing DX/V and IDS's Global Investment Manager (GIM) on Sun Microsystems Inc. platforms as a prelude to an across-the-board technology upgrade at the firm (IMT, April 17). MSAM has been running DX/V on Wang Laboratories Inc. computers.

MSAM, a subsidiary of Morgan Stanley & Co., offers investment management services to taxable and tax-exempt funds and institutions. The firm has offices in Chicago, Singapore, London and at its headquarters in New York. MSAM manages over $20 billion, including $2.5 billion in mutual funds; the firm's institutional investment strategy involves both fundamental and quantitative approaches.

IDS continues to make inroads at MSAM's overseas locations. IDS's GIM has been in place at MSAM's Singapore office for some time, and is scheduled to go live at MSAM in London this month. In addition, sources close to Morgan say its board has already issued a corporate mandate to migrate to IDS.

MSAM's head of operations, Eileen Cresham, declines to comment on the New York project. Andrew Summers, an operations executive at MSAM in London who has been involved in the New York, also declines to comment. But sources close to the project say Summers is currently in New York supervising additional implementations of IDS's GIM at other Morgan Stanley subsidiaries. These sources say the system is slated to support at least two more MSAM groups.

Data Exchange's decision to pitch a VAX/VMS version of DX/V is an attempt to address the weaknesses of its existing Wang-based system and put it on an even playing field with IDS's GIM. The Wang version wasn't capable of supporting relational database functionality, and couldn't be ported to Sybase. IDS, is written in C, runs under UNIX, and utilizes an Informix Software Inc. relational database. To address these issues, Data Exchange initially decided to port its system to a Sun platform running UNIX, which could have supported a relational database. But the compiler used to port DX/V's Cobol-based code to UNIX didn't function well on the Sun 390 server Data Exchange had intended to use. This forced Data Exchange to switch to a DEC VAX/VMS platform in its pitch to MSAM.

Now, in order to offer MSAM UNIX-based relational database management RDBMS functionality, Data Exchange has decided to run its system under Sybase's system. Sybase offers relational database software that runs under UNIX and VAX/VMS. Additionally, Sybase is porting its system to DOS.

Data Exchange founder and chief executive Bruce Hechler declines to comment on any specific implementations of DX/V at MSAM or elsewhere, but he does confirm the switch to Sybase.

At MSAM, Data Exchange is proposing a VAX/VMS version of DX/V running on a DEC VAX 6000-series processor. Data Exchange believes the processor will provide MSAM with a sufficiently powerful platform for the foreseeable future. More Sybase

Meanwhile, Data Exchange plans to recompile DX/V's Cobol code using Sybase's own compiler. In its current VAX/VMS incarnation, DX/V features indexed files rather than a relational database, and is accessible only using text-based terminals, rather than via processors capable of supporting graphical user interface and mouse (see Phase 1 of diagram).

Data Exchange programmers are now recompiling DX/V's Cobol code, using Sybase's proprietary compiler, to interface via structured query language (SQL) with Sybase's relational database management system (see Phase 2). The language for the DX/V applications engine will remain Cobol; but the input/output layer of the system is being rewritten to run with the Sybase RDBMS. Such applications as Lotus Development Corp. spreadsheets will be able to download information from the DX/V-Sybase database.

Eventually, more of the functionality of the Cobol applications engine will be ported to SQL (or rewritten in C or the Sybase proprietary database system). These would include yield-to-maturity and accrued interest applications. Ultimately, Data Exchange programmers intend to recompile Cobol code into C to support user access via the Microsoft Corp. Windows graphical user interface (see Phase 3).

Since Sybase has written its own interfaces to various UNIX operating systems as well as to VAX/VMS, Data Exchange executives expect that they will be able to offer their system on whatever platform Sybase runs. Sybase has been a popular system among financial services firms, and Data Exchange executives hope Sybase's popularity will rub off on DX/V. Data Exchange executives admit that until now their system has lacked relational database functionality. But they say that once they've compiled Cobol to run under Sybase's database system under the VMS and UNIX operating systems that their system will rival others in functionality.

These executives note that the version of VMS they intend to use is Open/VMS, a version of VMS that DEC has written to look like UNIX.