Eccleston to Reposition Pivot

Lou Eccleston, the new chief executive of US software vendor Pivot Solutions, has outlined plans to refocus the vendor as a broad provider of collaborative information solutions rather than just being known for its IMTrader messaging platform.

Eccleston, who joined the vendor last week (see Herd, page 5), will draw on his past experience at Thomson Financial and Bloomberg, though he says the aim is not to turn Pivot into a data vendor or compete with existing data products. "This won't be about eliminating desktops; it will work with desktops," he says.

"We have a clear vision already of the many ways in which Pivot can grow," Eccleston says. While IMTrader, which provides a FIX-enabled instant messaging platform that can export trades agreed over IM into proprietary systems via FIX, will continue to be "a critical component of the business," he says that "in future, it will be a capability on the network, alongside other capabilities."

Instead, the vendor will focus on other ways to utilize its network to integrate other functions alongside real-time communication, such as research distribution and data mining from other sources. Eccleston says the fact that IMTrader is already "consistent with the workflow that people either already have or want to have," will make it easier to draw proprietary information such as research or evaluation models into real-time conversations.

Any such strategy will "clearly... [involve] a big integration component," he says, though he is no stranger to integration projects, having been credited with much of the integration work behind the current face of the Thomson One product suite at Thomson.

Eccleston says he will also seek to grow Pivot via partnerships with third parties, enterprise agreements and white-labeling initiatives, and will be personally involved in "accelerating" the company's existing sales efforts.