The NICE offering has an open recording architecture that is based on industry recording standards, providing an interface to enable automatic recording of incoming and outgoing interactions that take place on mobile devices. The offering may be deployed as part of an existing NICE SmartCenter Interaction Recording implementation, decreasing implementation costs and providing maximum investment protection, or in any telephony environment, with any carrier and Smartphone that is commonly being used. In addition, it will enable companies to reduce risk with automatic alarming and monitoring capabilities for expedient identification and investigation of suspicious events for improved compliance, reduced risk, increased flexibility, minimized total cost of ownership, and ease of use. NICE also announces its Mobile Recording Solution Integration Certification Program for NICE Business Partners that offer the NICE solution and all smart client providers.

The significance and impact of the emerging trend of transactions taking place on mobile devices is reflected by the March 18, 2010 Consultation Paper published by the U.K.'s Financial Services Authority (FSA). In this paper the FSA indicates its plan to require investment firms to record the conversations held by traders on firm provided mobile phones. This follows on the March 2009 requirement for firms to record voice and electronic communications and keep them for six months to discourage insider trading. The NICE mobile recording solution will enable financial services firms to adhere to FSA requirements and other like regulations relating to financial transactions that take place via mobile phones.

"There is clearly a desire for mobile phones to replace desktop voice hardware in many scenarios in the financial markets, where they could be used as the primary interaction device to run trading tools and perform financial transactions," said Rik Turner, Senior Analyst, Financial Services Technology aat analyst firm Ovum. "With legislating coming in mandating call recording for mobiles too, this places a burden on firms to ensure compliance, even when the device being used is not part of the fixed-line infrastructure. Being able to record trader interactions regardless of the type of phone that is used, fixed or mobile, in a way that doesn't require replacing the existing recording infrastructure is the key to managing risk effectively and cost efficiently."

NICE's solution is based on an open architecture that can interface directly with the trader's handset via a smart client, a mobile phone application that resides on the trader's handset, or with a compliance server that is located on premises. Both the smart client and the compliance server automatically and simultaneously conference any interaction on the mobile handset to the NICE recording server with minimal impact on the user's mobile experience. The open recording architecture of the NICE solution enables NICE business partners and mobile service providers who offer smart clients to seamlessly integrate with the NICE recording platform, while enabling the trading services firms to leverage their existing recording infrastructure and enjoy flexibility in the selection of the smart client provider.

"NICE brings with it over 20 years of market leadership and experience in providing compliance solutions to the global financial services industry, and with our unique approach to recording, analyzing and managing mobile interactions we are changing the face of the industry once again," said Udi Ziv, President of the Enterprise Product Group at NICE. "By offering an open solution, we enable all of our partners and all smart client providers to offer NICE's enterprise grade compliance recording solution to financial services customers; while enabling firms to deploy the solution with any mobile phone in any telephony environment, with unmatched flexibility, efficiency and reliability."