Every two years, SIIA/FISD hosts the premier gathering of Market Data Executives & Professionals. Alternating between Europe and the US, this years World Financial Information Conference will be hosted in beautiful San Francisco, October 9 through 12th.

We are happy to announce the 2011 WFIC Pre-Conference Reception, sponsored by Xignite. Hosted at one of San Franciscos most prestigious Wine Clubs, Press Club SF, this event will feature wines from award winning vineyards in Napa, Sonoma, Santa Cruz and Russian River areas.

This complimentary event is open to all FISD Members, WFIC Attendees and a select Xignite Partners, Customers and Friends. Click THIS LINK to view the VIP invite for this event, or click the image below to request participation.

Additionally, if you have yet to register for the 2011 WFIC Conference, now is a great time to do so. Visit THIS PAGE and enter promo code “PRMWFSP” for a special $250 Xignite discount.

Like many of us, you may have run into challenges when importing real-time market data in Excel, Visual Studio & SQL Server. With the recent addition of Xignite Financial Market Data to the Microsoft Azure Marketplace Datamarket, users can now pull live stock quotes directly into Microsoft Excel 2010, develop data rich applications using Visual Studio 2010 and seamlessly populate backend database with SQL Server 2010.

In late 2010, Xignite and Microsoft teamed up to make XigniteBATSLastSale, a real-time stock quote data service, available through the Azure Marketplace Datamarket, with the addition of other datasets scheduled to rollout in the months ahead. With this, Microsoft users can obtain instant online access to real-time stock quotes from the BATS Exchange. Now everyone from hardcore mobile app developers to garage based startups can obtain access to the same professional grade APIs to power their applications.

New to Xignite is the addition of OData, or Open Data Protocol, a method of querying and updating data which unlocks the data from the silos that exist in legacy applications. Today, OData is being used to expose and access information from a variety of sources including, but not limited to, relational databases, file systems, content management systems and traditional Web sites.

Wes Yanaga with Microsoft’s Channel 9 sat down with Shoshanna Budzianowski (SQL Azure) and Chas Cooper (Xignite) to get the low down on what this partnership is all about, and how it will benefit end user around the globe.

After the Channel 9 video was completed, Shoshanna Budzianowski sat down with Marc Bollinger, Web Service Engineer at Xignite, for some one-on-one developer talk and a bit of programming fun (CLICK MORE to see developer video)

Looking forward, Xignite has plans to put the vast majority its data onto the Azure DataMarket. “We have started with our most popular data sets, but will continue to add data until the market is satisfied with what Xignite is offering” said Chas Cooper, VP of Product management at Xignite.

Microsoft brings a very horizontal market to Xignite, with DataMarket providing broad coverage across different verticals. When Microsoft looked for companies to work with on Data Market, two things attracted Microsoft to Xignite; 1) the fact that Xignite understands how to deliver on-demand market data and financial web services” and 2) out of all the financial data providers evaluated for Azure Datamarket, Xignite has the most reasonable, rational terms of use across its data sets. Xignite also uses standards such as SOAP, REST & JSON to make integrate with Xignite’s web services simple and straight forward.

Developers should visit http://datamarket.azure.com, where they can type Xignite into the search bar there and see all of the services available. More information is available at www.xignite.com.

This is my favorite time of year.  Snow, Christmas lights, family, friends, parties . . . Ahh, the holiday season is officially upon us.  One of my absolute favorite aspects of the holidays is sharing warm wishes and good times with friends, family, co-workers and strangers alike.

Last week, we shared some of that holiday cheer at the Xignite Meetup in NYC.  It was a perfect event, with over 40 customers, supporters and friends braving the cold to come out and enjoy drinks, darts and good times with some of the crew from Xignite.  We would like to thank everyone that came out to celebrate the season with us.  I have posted a small photo gallery of the meetup for your viewing pleasure (iPhone quality).  Also, a special thanks to the crew at Stout NYC, a great place to host a Social Meetup.

For those that were not able to attend, I would like to offer Xignite’s warmest wishes for an awesome Christmas, bright Hanukkah, and very special New Year. With 2009 coming to a close, we all hope that 2010 will bring fresh beginnings and new opportunities for us all!  Cheers and Happy Holidays from all the folks at Xignite!

With 2010 quickly approaching, we wanted to celebrate the holidays with our friends & partners in the NYC Area. Join the Xignite crew for some good food, great drinks and special holiday gifts.

Hang-out with Xignite CEO Stephane Dubois and a handful of other Xignite’rs at Stout NYC, Thursday December 17th from 5:30p to 7:30p. We will be located in the Dart Alley Area of Stout’s Cellar.

While everyone that attends will be hooked up with the latest Xignite gear (shirts, USB’s, shot glasses, etc.), the first ten people to arrive will receive a very special gift pack, worth $50 each. We look forward to enjoying great food, cold beers and a quick dart shootout with our friends & partners in NYC.

We just inked a new partnership with Wavemaker.   WaveMaker provides an easy-to-use visual builder that lets you assemble scalable web applications using Ajax widgets, web services and databases with a simple drag & drop interface. WaveMaker’s Studio lets you create web services based applications quickly and without complex code, forms, patterns or portal frameworks.

According to the folks at WaveMaker, their tool can accelerate the development of applications by as much as 67% and cut the lines of code written by 98% making applications are cheaper to maintain and easier to manage. Take a look at a sample of our data embedded in a stock ticker widget displayed on a Web page created by WaveMaker.