2010

London, 28th July 2010 – Orange Business Services - Trading Solutions, the leader in voice and electronic trading infrastructure and services for the trading communities, announced today that Open Trade, its intelligent trading communication platform, launched in April this year, has been awarded the prestigious “Le Janus de L’industrie” design award by the internationally renowned French Design Institute. Established in 1953, previous winners of this award include worldwide recognised brands such as Dyson, Phillips and Renault.

Working with specialist design and engineering organisation, Altran, Orange Business Services - Trading Solutions entered a new era with the creation of an innovative, ergonomic, touch screen multimedia communications platform, Open Trade. One of the drivers behind the introduction of Open Trade, a personal trading assistant, was a desire to meet all current and future needs of traders familiar with using design-driven tools like smart phones to support their daily lives. Orange Business Services - Trading Solutions was convinced by the value of a design-led approach for the desktop product that would take in to account day to day tasks of the end user and the need for a reliable tool enabling rapid and accurate communication.

To win the award Orange Business Services - Trading Solutions needed to prove Open Trade was unmatched when assessed against a long list of stringent design criteria under the banners of aesthetics, ethics, ergonomics, economics and emotion.

Anne-Marie Sargueil, President of the French Design Institute said, “We had a strong set of applicants for this award but we chose Open Trade from Orange Business Services - Trading Solutions for several reasons. With a long history of developing voice solutions for the financial services industry, it was apparent that the company had strong connections with the market, understood traders working habits and had invested significant time observing trading floors to be able to set out a precise vision of the type of product that they wanted to develop: a tool that was easy for traders to use, that would increase traders’ efficiency and had a state-of-the-art ergonomic design. We consider Open Trade to be a success on all three fronts and congratulate Orange Business Services - Trading Solutions on winning the award.”

Open Trade is a slim-line compact device that takes up minimal valuable desk real-estate. Two versions of the terminal are available including Open Trade Evolution, a dual screen system and a single screen model, Open Trade Compact.

More than a turret, Open Trade provides traders with multiple communication channels that converge at a single point for information and conversations, and seamlessly integrates voice, video, email, instant messaging and web-based applications. Open Trade presents an innovative, intuitive and flexible approach to unified communications. It is a Cloud-ready, multimedia communications hub that also meets green standards while being tough enough to handle the busiest of trading rooms.

Lionel Grosclaude, CEO of Orange Business Services - Trading Solutions said, “While speed and security are vital for enabling traders to gain a competitive advantage in the market, today’s financial industry players have also become used to working with design-led devices. We were convinced that  a design-led approach coupled with the latest technology would be a winning combination for our next trading communications platform. Winning the esteemed ‘Le Janus de L’industrie’ design award for Open Trade proves that we were right in our assumptions and we are delighted to accept the award which has been received by so many renowned brands in the past.”