INCREASINGLY the battle to get ahead on the markets is a battle for information. A Dublin software company, with experience in providing financial markets with systems that carry real time information, has developed a new system it hopes will find a home in dealing rooms [around the world.

Quay Financial Software (QFS) last week launched its new product, Slingshot.

Irish businesses are said to be "very interested" in the system and Ulster Bank has already begun to use Slingshot this week. QFS also aims to sell Slingshot to world financial markets.

The system may prove to be one of the boldest moves so far for QFS, which was recently acquired as a subsidiary by CSK Ireland.

CSK Ireland is a subsidiary of the giant CSK Corporation, which is Japan's largest independent computer services company.

QFS employs over 100 staff including software engineers, mathematicians and finance professionals.

While there are many other systems offering financial data, Slingshot is a publishing platform which allows any financial institution to publish real time market data on the Internet.

At the same time it allows any authorised user, anywhere in the world, to access that data.

By using Slingshot, institutions can themselves determine which data should be made available, in what format and at what price. They can also decide to whom that information should be released.

QFS realises the demands the markets have for real time information.

One of the problems with other systems for the delivery of market data is that depending on the technology used, these market snapshots reflect either the previous day's close of business or the state of the market at the time the user initiated the query.

The more familiar systems like Reuters are proprietary systems which decide how the information from the institutions is to be presented.

With Slingshot the users decide how they want to present their own information.

Mr Colm Toolan, business development manager with QFS, says this should prove appealing to the financial institutions.

"We expect this product to be very profitable, it is a culmination of a lot of hard work, we have developed this technology before but specifically for inside the dealer room - this product is different because it is using the Internet".

QFS is not worried about selling to such a potentially large market.

"We are part of the CSK Corporation and they are represented worldwide, particularly in the main business centres. So they will be our first distribution channel," says Mr Toolan.

The World Wide Web will also be used to heavily market the new system.

Financial institutions will pay for the software, but there will be no specific connection charges for using the service on the Internet.

QFS is confident that its product has found a gap in the financial data market.

QFS says Slingshot is one of the biggest projects of its 11 year history.

"We know the market and we know the time is right for this product", says Mr Toolan.