While both parties had a similar goal of putting various types of communications onto the same platform, each had specific strengths that, if combined, had the potential to be widely adopted.
Goldman’s technology factored in a range of compliance and best-practices needs for large financial services firms, including information barriers to protect sensitive information and the ability to surveil, retain and retrieve messages.
But while Goldman’s technology was hosted on its own servers, Perzo’s technology was cloud-based, which made it less expensive to distribute widely. Gurle had also developed a multi-layer encryption tool to protect sensitive data stored in the cloud by various users.
Goldman’s Cohen approached Gurle about a year ago to find out whether he was interested in combining forces. During his career, Gurle, a native of France, has developed now widely used chat systems for Microsoft Corp, Thomson Reuters and Skype, which is owned by Microsoft. His experience gave him a keen sense of what financial and corporate customers needed.
After looking at Goldman’s platform, Gurle agreed to partner with the bank. One critical decision was to make Symphony an open-source platform, allowing users to customize it to their individual needs.
“This is really where the value I’ve been working on over the last 20 years on messaging comes together,” Gurle said. “You need to make sure that (information) arrives in a way that its integrity, its privacy and its timeliness are never in question.”
Gurle and Cohen initially decided to target five other financial firms to contribute capital and to be partners. But after Reuters reported on the investment in August, Goldman and Perzo received more than 5,000 calls from companies interested in joining them. (Reuters) [eap_ad_3]