Lotus And Shaw Data To Market Link Between Respective Database Products

Lotus Development Corp. and Shaw Data Services Inc. have introduced Shaw Link, a bridge that will enable users of Shaw's portfolio-management service to download their portfolio information into a Lotus One Source application running on a PC.

Lotus hopes the link will attract new business for One Source from Shaw's population of portfolio manager customers. As its part of the joint marketing deal, Lotus is expected to market Shaw's portfolio service to its One Source customers. The companies have yet to sell Shaw Link.

Shaw provides its primarily institutional portfolio management customers with daily price and valuations of the securities they are holding. Shaw users access their portfolio data via IBM-compatible PCs linked via dedicated line to Shaw's Fairfield, N.J.-based mainframe.

One Source provides access to Lotus's line of historical and analytical databases. Customers receive weekly updates via compact disk, or daily updates via dialup to Lotus's data center. The database line -- called CD/Investment -- comprises 12 databases covering U.S. equities and financial information on public and private companies. Financial information on banks is provided by Sheshunoff Information Services Inc., and historical data such as long-term dividend and earnings information is provided by Standard & Poor's Corp.'s Compustat. Other database sources include Daily Stock Price History from Muller Data Corp., Value Line and Institutional Brokers Estimate System from Citicorp subsidiary Lynch, Jones & Ryan.

Lotus recommends the use of an IBM PC AT-compatible microprocessor. One Source customers are supplied with a CD- ROM card that is inserted into their PCs and an external CD- ROM reader, which pulls data into the computer.

Shaw Link, introduced last month, costs $250 per month or $3,000 per year per workstation. Shaw customers opting for Shaw Link will be able to subscribe to One Source at a $10,000 discount from the regular annual subscription, which starts at $35,000. The discount reflects the fact that Shaw customers already get securities pricing data from Interactive Data Corp., making the Muller data available via One Source redundant.

The new bridge will allow a portfolio manager to automatically download designated portfolio information from the Shaw mainframe into a Lotus One Source program. This replaces parsing of files, rekeying of data or translating the files into ASCII. He could then pull the latest balance sheet information on a security from a One Source CD, and incorporate the data into an analysis of that holding for a client or add it to a model he's developing on the entire portfolio.

Lotus approached Shaw after a strategic decision not to pursue the portfolio management services business itself, says a Lotus spokeswoman. Shaw has the largest customer base of institutional managers in that business, she says, with 260 client companies and 30,000 portfolios. Shaw will not discuss its competitors in the market for portfolio management services.

Lotus, with 1,300 organizations using One Source, reasoned that combining accounting/reporting features with research capabilities would make it harder for its competitors to steal customers, says Kenneth Grunzweig, general manager for Once Source.