Calastone and Microsoft have formed a partnership which will see both firms collaborate on the use of cloud and distributed ledger technology (DLT) to create market efficiency across the global investment funds industry.
Through the combination of Calastone’s network, technology and market experience, with Microsoft’s expertise and track record in delivering capital markets solutions through Microsoft Azure, both companies will work to create opportunities for collective investments globally.
Calastone said in a statement that it is leveraging its network as the foundation on which to enable the asset management industry to realise its digital transformation agenda.
As requirements for accessible, low cost and innovative ways of investing grow, Calastone is applying advanced technologies to develop next-generation infrastructure for the distribution of investment funds.
DMI Fund Services, which was introduced by Calastone, offers a suite of solutions, providing fund managers, administrators, and distributors a fully digital operating model, enabled by cloud and DLT.
When DMI Fund Services was being developed, Calastone said it selected Azure because of its reliability, security, scalability and confidential computing platform, which includes the Confidential Consortium Framework (CCF).
CCF is an open-source framework used to build a new category of applications that focus on multi-party confidential compute and storage.
CCF was selected by Calastone as its chosen framework to provide the scalability and security required to operate on a global scale. CCF is expected to allow for transformative fund trading and dynamic data sharing across the whole industry, using a common infrastructure.
As DMI Fund Services and Azure confidential computing evolve, the partnership between Calastone and Microsoft will deliver new capabilities, which the firms claim will enable transfer agents, fund managers and fund distributors to transform how they operate and service their clients, and ultimately gain from the wholescale market efficiency of loweing the overall cost of investing.
“Calastone’s DMI Fund Services, combined with Microsoft Azure and distributed ledger technology, unlocks a secure and scalable way for firms to access the critical data and insights they need to further enhance the client experience, significantly reduce operating costs, and develop new investment models,” said Bill Borden, corporate vice president of Worldwide Financial Services at Microsoft.