April 1997
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April 1997
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First Call (Boston, Mass.; http://www.firstcall.com), a provider of financial information and services, will begin offering an extranet-based solution to its 9,000 customers. First Call's extranet is based on a new extranet-enabling product from PFN (Cambridge, Mass.; http://www.pfn.inc).
PFN Continuum is a solution for business-to-business communication that provides the key enabling technology for companies building extranets. Extranets are the interconnection of corporate intranets that allow companies to manage their internal and external information sources; gain dynamic and secure communications with customers, suppliers and business partners; and share proprietary corporate information with business partners outside their internal intranet.
PFN Continuum enables companies with corporate intranets &emdash; whether local, national or global &emdash; to design and deploy working extranets. It delivers global intranet-to-intranet connectivity; integrates news, general and specialized information from multiple sources or locations; supports one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many communications; and provides permission and security features for routing proprietary information intelligently among intranets.
Extranet connectivity represents a fundamental shift in how customers can receive First Call's services. As Wall Street firms increasingly come to rely on their intranets to manage, distribute and store their high-value information, the availability of data via an extranet (such as First Call has established with PFN Continuum) can enhance the speed and ease with which they can control their own information.
"Our data can be integrated with an organization's internal and external documents and delivered on any standard, TCP/IP-based intranet," explained Bruce Fador, president and CEO of First Call. The intelligent information management capabilities in the extranet solution will also allow First Call to refine its delivery mechanisms. The result, according to Fador, will be heavily customized products that target the needs of specific organizations, groups or individual users.