Numerix, a provider of cross-asset analytics for derivatives valuations and risk management, plans to enable additional Numerix solutions for use with Microsoft’s cloud platform, Windows Azure.

Steven R O’Hanlon (pictured), president and chief operating officer of Numerix, says: “Evolving derivatives regulations and unpredictable market conditions have fuelled demand for more frequent, granular and portfolio-wide valuations and risk analytics. In order to process these calculations for thousands of financial instruments in near real-time, access to on-demand, scalable compute power has become a must-have in today’s financial services and insurance firms.”

Numerix currently offers its CrossAsset XL and Portfolio solutions powered by Windows Azure and Windows HPC Server. These solutions enable users to burst Excel calculations to the cloud and distribute them across a grid or a combination of both private and public cloud compute environments. This allows business agility, reduces capital expenditure, and quickly scales to meet the most compute intensive pricing and calculation demands.

Numerix will build on this and extend its use of Windows Azure to include Numerix Leading Hedge, an asset and liability management solution for variable annuities and equity index annuities, as well as forthcoming new releases of Numerix CrossAsset.

“Our alliance with Microsoft underscores our commitment to meet customer demand with Windows Azure-enabled solutions,” O’Hanlon says. “Our ability to burst pricing and risk calculations to Windows Azure is revolutionizing the ways firms can leverage the cloud to manage risk across their diverse portfolios. Looking ahead, cloud enablement will be integral to our new product development efforts.”