Derivatives dealers like to think of themselves as masters of the universe when they sit in their offices and gaze at their multimillion-dollar trading and risk management systems.

But when they're out on the road, they're virtually powerless because it's difficult or impossible to access those systems via laptop.

C*ATS Software has recently revealed what may be the first attempt to distribute access to a derivatives trading system through the Internet. The Java application was designed to link the global risk manager section of its Catalyst trading software with an Internet gateway so traders on the road can tap into the analytics on their office systems.

C*ATS is eager to stress that the application is a "proof of concept" rather than a product that's ready to ship. Although it was shown discreetly at the Securities Industry Association's New York Technology Show in June, C*ATS is keeping mum about when the new application will be available for purchase.

"In the past you had to develop software specifically for portables," says Finn Christensen, vice president of marketing at C*ATS. "But with Java, the issue of platform disappears. If you get up at 2:00 a.m. sweating over your position, you can turn on your laptop and dial up to your office and download the risk sensitivities."

The test application was run on a simple data base containing a wide variety of derivatives transactions. Users download a Java applet that allows them to take a look at the basic data and do sensitivity analyses on the spot. They can also take a look at-and graph-net present values. When hooked up to data feeds, it will allow traders to track their positions in real time.

Christensen believes the application will also help derivatives salespeople make more timely and accurate presentations. A salesperson can now use the Internet to put together a deal for a client at the client's offices using today's market data. Users could also feed parameters into the system and watch how the deal behaves under different scenarios.

Although Christensen says full-blown trading across the Internet is still "a ways away," he admits to being surprised at how little time it took to design the application. The project was the result of a joint effort by Fusion Systems Corp., a New York­based consulting firm, and Sun Microsystems' Object Reality Center, a New York­based Sun outpost designed to help financial institutions use distributed object technology.

To get access to the system on the road, users simply fire up their laptop and Netscape browser. At the server end, however, programmers need to load an Object Request Broker (ORB), a piece of software that allows different programs to communicate across different operating systems-effectively allowing lowly PCs to use distributed objects created on more powerful systems.

Mamdouh Barakat Risk Management (MBRM) has released an upgrade of a key software package, version 7.3 of UNIVEXOT Exotics Add-in. It will be recalled that Barakat sold his firm, Financial Systems Software, to FNX and subsequently became head of FNX's spreadsheet add-in software business. But 18 months later-last spring-he cut out on his own again. FNX is targeting the market it knows best, the corporate user. Barakat, on the other hand, who launched Financial Systems Software with mail order selling of add-ins for pricing options, bonds and interest rate derivatives, seeks the common man. The UNIVEXOT is downloadable via the Internet (http//www.mbrm.com), including manuals. These aren't demos, but fully functional systems on a 30-day trial after which buyers simply send 499 British pounds by check or credit card. According to Barakat there is a strong demand for this kind of product. "Equity fund managers have recently being using exotic options to offer equity-linked bond offerings, where the return on the bond is linked to the performance of one or two equity indices like the S&P or the FTSE," he says.

Chalk up a significant win for Sybase's SQL (Structured Query Language). Late in August SunGard announced that Union Bank of Switzerland has become the first bank to carry out global implementation of SQL of the Devon Derivatives System for trading and tracking derivatives. Mark Ashton-Rigby, head of the UBS front office operations, found that the "system enabled us to interface with other strategic systems within the bank in a way which created more integrated network while minimizing unwanted intrusion into the operating environments themselves." All of which makes global implementation a "far more tenable and attractive proposition."

Following their customers' technology preferences, high-powered three-dimensional information visualizations are rapidly migrating out of the UNIX habitat to Windows NT platform. "Porting to NT is in sync with the direction the marketplace is taking," notes Max Stevens-Guille, of Toronto, Canada­based Visible Decisions, which has released an NT version of its Discovery product for $5,500. This object-oriented toolkit for visualizations of static and real-time data will now be available to a much wider corporate audience.