A Canadian vendor, Prologic Corp., has opened its first U.S. office and is aiming to sell its client/server software to U.S. banks.
Prologic is a 13-year-old company that has installed systems for 80 financial institutions in 23 countries, but has no U.S. installations. The company is based in Richmond, British Columbia.
This year, Prologic raised $6.5 million in capital through Bank of Boston Corp. and Battery Ventures of Boston. It opened an office near Hartford, Conn., and plans to spend its newly acquired funds on marketing.
"We think we've got a great solution for banks," said Bob Wilband, president and chief executive officer of Prologic. "One of the key advantages of our product is scalability-we can scale up from a very small bank to a very large bank."
The core banking system that Prologic sells is called Ovation. Mr. Wilband said the system addresses all "standard banking needs" and connects to a variety of channels: automated teller machines, kiosks, point-of-sale terminals, call centers, and the Internet.
"Most banks today are still running on old legacy mainframe systems, which are very difficult and expensive to maintain and very inflexible," Mr. Wilband said.
"With Ovation, they can come out with new products in days rather than months and years."
The company is entering a market that is getting crowded. The companies offering systems similar to Ovation include Phoenix International of Maitland, Fla.; Eastpoint Technologies of Bedford, N.H.; Perot Systems of Dallas; and Open Solutions Inc. of Glastonbury, Conn.
Erin Kingston, a marketing executive for Prologic, said her company hoped to sign up U.S. banks with assets of more than $500 million. De novo banks are also a target market, she said, because they are "more willing to leapfrog existing technology."
