Albert Fekete, CEO of Hungarian Oracle ISV partner 21^st Century Financial Systems, talks to us about how the two companies are jointly approaching the local market.

Formed in 1997, 21^st Century Financial Systems is based in Budapest and employs 30 staff members. Approximately half of these are software developers and the other half are economists, but to ensure that all staff have a thorough understanding of the business all of the programmers are trained in economics and the economists have a thorough grounding in the company's technology.

In 2004 the company had an estimated 2005 net income of US$4 million, but this is expected to increase significantly over the next year due to several major international client wins. These include the Ministry of Finance and Central Bank of Serbia and Montenegro, along with a major financial services provider in Saudi Arabia. Albert Fekete, CEO of 21^st Century Financial Systems, said: "We are completely based on Oracle technology and we are very satisfied with it. It's one of the keys to our success in the market. We have realised it's a very stable platform so we are very happy with it. We have had some international successes and all of them were based on 10g technology."

The company's flagship product is the TRASSET treasury and asset management system, which complements the functionality in Oracle E-Business Suite, and is used by financial services providers throughout Central and Eastern Europe. One of the product's key strengths is its suitability for organisations working across multiple territories. This is vital in a region made up of many geographically small but politically independent countries. An important feature of the TRASSET system is its configurability - it is a very flexible system that can be modified to accommodate rapidly-changing laws and fiscal regulations.

The system is based on Oracle Database 10g and the company also uses Oracle Application Server along with various Oracle Java development tools.

The company chose to work with Oracle after trialling various alternatives in 1997 and deciding that none of the rival database or development tools was stable enough for its purposes. After visiting Oracle for a demonstration training session in that same year, 21^st Century Financial Solutions decided Oracle offered the best platform and joined the Oracle PartnerNetwork. Since then the two companies have worked closely and Oracle has assisted with both technical and business development.

"We have sold the TRASSET system to 30 customers, and in many cases it was the first time they had run an Oracle-based system," says Fekete. "Many clients were pleasantly surprised by the user-friendly screens that we had created with Oracle Forms."

Locally, the relationship with Oracle Hungary is working well. "Last year we had very strong connections with Oracle Hungary and we got a lot of help from them," says Fekete. "For example, we tendered for a contract with a large financial services provider in Bucharest, and we had to convince their ISV partner that Oracle was the best platform for this job. We did not have the in-house capability to perform that level of communication, so Oracle assisted us with this and we won the contract."

Working with Oracle technology has helped 21^st Century Financial Systems grow quickly into a successful business with an increasing number of high-profile international customers in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and Ukraine. These are countries where competing products have historically had greater penetration but many organisations are now planning to migrate to Oracle.

Fekete said: "The main advantage is that because we are on Oracle technology we can offer our clients a stable and powerful platform. In many cases we won a tender because we were based on Oracle technology."