BSS sums up the results of 2004

During the past year, BSS was growing at a good pace it was enjoying from the beginning. The total amount of credit institutions running BSS's solutions has exceeded 1,000! Over 130 banks and their branches and subsidiaries in RF and former CIS countries have become BSS's customers in 2004. Successful bidding as well as interesting marketing offers and large-scale distribution of BS-Client's subsystems among branches and subsidiaries increased the amount of BSS's customers multiple times.

During 2004, "Bank's Soft Systems" continued to actively expand beyond Russia. Such activities are still of vital importance to us and are of special priority. BSS's efforts resulted in customer base enlargement with such banks as "Golden Taler" (Belarus), "Temirbank" (Kazakhstan), "Valut-Transit Bank" (Kazakhstan), "Alashbank" (Kazakhstan), Banka Comerciala Romana (Moldova), Agroindbank Moldova S.A. Completely localized solutions in line with local legislations ensured success and popularity of BSS's systems among credit institutions in former CIS countries. Particular attention should be given to concluding a partner agreement with Onix Group (Almaty), which significantly enhanced our position on Kazakh banking market.

It should be emphasized that BSS's products are running not only in head offices of hundreds of successful banks, but are widely applied in their branches as well. During 2004, various subsystems within the common BS-Client were implemented in a number of branches of Vneshtorbank, "Sviaz-bank", Bank of Khanty-Mansiysk, Promsvyazbank, East Bridge Bank, bank "Petrocommerce", etc.

2004 poll by the competent council of the British journal revealed that BS-Client is applied in 9 (out of the 21 listed) leading Russian banks from the top 1000 largest banks in the world. Those included such acknowledged industry leaders as Vneshtorgbank, MDM bank, Alfa Bank, Uralsib, NOMOS Bank, Trust Investment Bank, "Petrocommerce", IMB, Promsvyazbank.

Today, "Bank's Soft Systems" is service leading Russian and foreign banks. Users of BSS's solutions throughout the RF territory, former CIS countries and further abroad number hundreds of thousands of individuals and businesses from among bank customers. The significant enhancement of our financial position in 2004 confirms our steady progress. Our turnover increased by more than 76% to amount to over $15 mln. Such totals supported our leading position in the on-line banking systems area that we have been maintaining over the past few years.

According to СNews.ru, by the end of 2003 BSS's market share grew up to 34.15%. The amount of our Internet-based systems implementations well outnumbers all of our current competitors. Meanwhile, in its Rating of IT companies for 2003 the "Expert RA" rating agency placed "Bank's Soft Systems" on the 34th position among largest Russian IT companies. Our revenue increment was noticed in the rating summary to outdo such well known software developers as R-Style and "Diasoft" (the other Remote banking vendors are out of the Expert RA's rating).

Evaluation of the on-line banking market conducted by "Organizational Technological Resolutions" again showed that "Bank's Soft Systems" tops the list, which sums up our activities for 2004. The survey lasted two months and included banks of various scale from various RF regions. The survey provided information on on-line banking systems usage collected across 231 banks. Own solutions appeared to go second almost by any indicator with most credit institutions. However, the most popular special solution was the "Bank-Client" system by "Bank's Soft Systems". 70 of the reviewed banks are running it, which is 32% of the total number of banks applying products of this class. The most popular "Internet-Client" system with most banks' votes is also BSS's solution. According to the review, 37 banks (29% of their total number) are successfully running this solution. The most popular "Telephone-Client" systems is again the solution by "Bank's Soft Systems". It has 23 out of 44 votes, which is 52% of the total.

During 2004, we carried on multiple interesting marketing campaigns that captured attention of a considerable portion of the bank market. Such campaigns as "Telephone-Client - free installation and connection", "Internet banking for every bank", "5+5" highlighted our company and produced good financial results. Also, "Bank's Soft Systems" organized multiple interesting competitions and quizzes for its customers. A lottery that BSS organized at IV International Forum iFin-2004, questionnaire and interesting prizes to honour our 10th anniversary again shown that "Bank's Soft Systems" is confidently leading the market and supports its active presence.

BSS's specialists have performed at important industry-specific conferences and exhibitions. Beside IV International Forum iFin-2004, in 2004 we played an important role at IX Conference for users of banking systems by "FORS-BS", XI Belarussian Congress TIBO-2004, the Cominfo2004 exhibition, the Second International Conference "Banking business technologies: bank management", X International Forum for IBS developers. We have provided specific workshops and topical presentations that attracted most prominent banking market representatives each time.

In 2004, "Bank's Soft Systems" celebrated its 10th anniversary. During this period, we not only used to find new development areas but aimed to provide our partners with most up-to-date on-line banking tools as well. Our experience in preparing optimal solutions for the banking business has brought us the right status of the leading OLB systems developer. During the lifetime, our company has grown from a small organization rendering ABS implementation and support services to a successful leader of the e-banking market.

This year BSS is celebrating yet another important event - moving to our own office building. The new building of 3,500 sq.m. has a spacious presentation room with proper computer equipment, a roomy canteen with a cafe bar, parking zone. All this is another drives efficient work, growth, and advance.

Noticeable enhancement of BS-Client's functionality should be highlighted. It mainly lies in implementation of new forms for foreign currency documents developed in line with the Federal law No. 173-ФЗ (Rus) of 10-Dec-03 "On currency regulation and control", CBRF's Instruction No. 117-И (Rus) of 15-Jun-04, CBRF's Order No. 258-П (Rus) of 01-Jun-04, and CBRF's Instruction No. 111-И (Rus) of 30-Mar-04. The new forms meet the requirements as long as possible and are included into the core suite of currency documents into the system.

The "Retail Client" system for private banking was enlarged with SMS and e-mail notifications through the "Notification Server" as well as with the newly developed "Self-Service Kiosk" subsystem. "Retail Client" Release 1.4 offers session keys to be used as an analog of a handwritten signature, which avoids the need to install ActiveX. This ensured the wide usage of the system, including Internet cafes. A lite version of the ActiveX components is enough to apply digital signatures.

The "Mobile Client" and "Information Client" subsystems implemented in the framework of "Retail Client" v.1.4 are designed for comfortable processing of banking information through modern mobile computers (PDA). Performance received our rapt attention. Thus, "Retail Client" operation performance increased by 30-50%. The extensions for Release 1.4 ensured cut on traffic. On average, it is twice as much when you log in and three times as much when you work in the system.

In the early August, 2004 one of the largest Russian banks ordered "Bank's Soft Systems" to test performance with over 750 thousand users (individuals), which successfully passed. We applied the workload distribution system between application servers. The high complexity of such testing did not affect system performance in the least to confirm its stable, safe operation and scalable nature.

The late 2004 saw a new release of BS-Client (15.4) announced. The "Internet-Client" subsystem for businesses was the most affected. We enhanced it with support for standard facilities of Web connection protection: one-side and two-side (CryptoProTLS-based ) SSL. The protocol support works around a client site installation pack as components required for user operation are downloaded into his/her workplace on-line. For one-side SSL, client authentication through digital signing is ensured to protect a communication channel.

In the upcoming year we are going to actively develop new technologies providing banks with the full range of OLB services. "Bank's Soft Systems" is ready to provide its current and potential customers with a full list of e-banking solutions ensuring up-to-date banking service level. We hope to continue to promptly foresee new banking market need and offer is participant most successful solutions before they are of urgent need.