Trading-system provider Fidessa has taken the first steps to expand its platform’s capabilities with the launch of a partnership program and the announcement that OTAS Technologies as the program’s first partner, according to Fidessa executives.

The objective is to encourage innovation in financial technology, by giving a leg up to smaller firms that may not have the infrastructure or market share to get their wares noticed.

“This is breaking new ground for us,” explained James Blackburn, global head of sell-side equities product marketing at Fidessa. “Our approach has always had been organic. Partnership arrangements have been prolific in many industries, with software being no different. We wanted to position our partnership as something materially different because partnership programs are ten a penny.”

The partner program goes beyond simple integration via Application Program InterfaceI links, according to Blackburn.

“With APIs, one party provides the API, the partner writes to it, and what comes out is caveat emptor,” he said. “We have worked with OTAS Technologies to really curate the user experience together.”

Fidessa has entered into an OEM agreement with OTAS to deliver the vendor’s PreTrade and InTrade Analytics, as well as its trading-signal offering alongside to Fidessa’s Order Performance Monitor.

“Fidessa will handle the sales, licensing and billing processes for its partners and clients,” explained Blackburn. “Clients are able to plug into their compliance, legal and billing systems, and we stand in front of that globally.”

Blackburn does not envision Fidessa’s program expanding beyond five or six additional partners that would provide tools for news aggregation, news analysis, social media analysis, data visualization and other services.

“Understanding how to deliver trading signals from news events and sentiment analysis really excites us,” said Blackburn. “No one really has gotten it right yet and we are looking for partners in that area.”

Blackburn expects that Fidessa will announce the next member of its Partner Program sometime before year-end.