Symphony Launches Secure Messaging Platform, Partners with Dow Jones

Symphony Communication Services launched its communications messaging platform today in New York, and also announced their content partnership with Dow Jones, McGraw Hill Financial, and Selerity.

The California-based communications company developed a secure and compliant cloud messaging application that is now available for free worldwide.

Together, the open-source cloud platform and the partnerships will provide simple access to relevant information to consume and distribute, while increasing workflow productivity.

The messaging application incorporates end-to-end encryption that is owned and operated by the customers to secure messages and stored data.

This means there are no service provider or vendor access, and also serves as protection from cyber-threats.

“We needed to engineer a system that is always going to be secure no matter what, and the technology for that is encryption,” said David Gurle, CEO of Symphony.

Among the platform’s many features includes the ability to manage social activity, chats, activate signals by subscribing to cache tags and hashtags within discussions, and blast messages to other members.

Another useful compliance feature is the ability to disable copy and paste functions to ensure data protection and secure messaging.

The company is already partnered with Box, allowing customers to preview external content, and Google Hangouts to allow direct video calls within the platform.  

But with the integration with Dow Jones, McGraw Hill Financial and Selerity, customers can achieve quick access to news and information relevant to their discussions through the use of both cache tags and hashtags.

This is supported through the creation of third-party applications and content feeds through Symphony’s open platform APIs.

“Content is critical to workflow productivity – whether it is generated in-house or sourced from trusted third-parties,” said Gurle.

The Dow Jones integration will give access to the entire news feed from Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal’s reporting network, announced Edward Roussel, chief innovation officer, Dow Jones.

The S&P Captial IQ, as part of McGraw Hill Financial will be able to show company data including company financials, estimates, ratios, ownership, and their growing content feed.

“Financial professionals can now conveniently access S&P Capita IQ financial data while collaborating with their colleagues, partners and peers,” said Jonathan Reeve, chief data officer, S&P Capital IQ.

Selerity will provide relevant news, research, and Selerity’s proprietary breaking news notifications. The service will let customers be alerted to relevant trending events and discover content based on search queries, said Ryan Terpstra, founder and CEO, Selerity.

Since the company’s launch in October 2014, Symphony has developed an enterprise edition of the messaging platform for $15 per month per user.

But the long-term vision is incorporate more communication features within the platform such as e-mail integration and screen sharing.

“First we have to prove to everybody that the product is meeting the expectations in terms of benefits, and that’s going to be one our major focuses,” said Gurle.