VPS Cancel DEPEND Project

VPS, the Norwegian CSD, today cancelled the project to replace their core CSD system with Percival’s new jDEPEND product.  

VPS signed an agreement with Percival in November 2014 to port the successful DEPEND system from its .NET platform to Java and customise it to handle local Norwegian requirements and business practices.  

DEPEND was chosen by VPS because of the product’s high level of configurability and flexibility that was estimated would give VPS a base from which to handle their current business practices, while allowing them to quickly modify those practices or develop new services to meet the changing demands of the market in respect of new regulations and business practices such as CSDR being introduced. As a consequence, the agreement with VPS was based on a customisation of Percival’s standard DEPEND product instead of new development.  

In August 2015, Percival delivered the standard DEPEND product ported to Java according to contract with no critical errors in the delivery. However, VPS’s position in respect of some key IT requirements caused them to reject the delivery and insist on rectification with a new approach that would represent development of a radically different architecture instead of the originally agreed approach to port and customise the standard system. As a consequence, the parties disagreed on the principles for fixing the conflicts between the two approaches and the levels of performance to be met at the core porting phase of the project.  

Irrespective of considerable joint work with VPS in assessment and planning to define a new timetable and approach to the development work, it was decided that the new timetable and attendant increase in costs were not acceptable and the project was accordingly cancelled.  

Percival will continue with its project to develop jDEPEND, redefining its goals and design objectives to deliver an alternative platform for existing and future customers.  

Our planned deliveries for the future include a new and fully flexible corporate event processing module that allows the customer to define their corporate action processes in a flexible way from the basic building blocks. Percival will also implement a powerful browser-based workflow engine to allow customers to define a layer of ‘wizard’-like screen flows through which participants and other service users can access the business functionality within the CSD.  

These additions will be made to jDEPEND as well as to our existing .NET product already in place at eight customer sites.