A looming competitor to Bloomberg

Robert Hackett of Fortune writes about Symphony, a company looking to compete with Bloomberg.

Hackett writes, “For Gurle’s part, his ambition exceeds unseating Bloomberg. With plans for a full release by this summer, he would like his end-to-end encrypted messaging tool to sweep the currently fragmented landscape (cluttered with Bloomberg chat, Thomson Reuters Eikon, AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo chat, Gchat, etc.) with an all-in-one, fully compliant alternative. He hopes it will be just as popular with consumers as businesses.

“As CEO of Symphony, Gurle plans to make the service open source, so people can build features, like content and news elements, on top, unlike the closed Bloomberg system. He also aims to embed helpful contextual intelligence in Symphony, such as an automated personal assistant. The service will likely be free with three paid tiers, he says, mentioning add-ons like access to corporate directories, unlimited storage, regulatory compliance, and network redundancies. In terms of the paid tier pricing, he expects: Professional (less than $10 per month), Enterprise (between $15 and $20 per month), and Enterprise Plus (less than $30 per month).

“‘I’m going to make a very bold statement,” Gurle declares. ‘If we end up forcing you to use two different communication tools—inboxes, let’s call it, for lack of a better term—then we have failed,’ he says. “Then we will not have simplified your life, we will have made it more complicated.'”

Read more here.