Client TheMuniCenter’s™ goal is to be the number one marketplace for buying and selling fixed income securities. The project is backed by Merrill Lynch & Co., Salomon Smith Barney, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. and Lehman. Challenge In April of 2000, four of the largest players in the municipal bond market converged to create a Web marketplace that expands the world of fixed income trading. The site offers brokers and institutional investors the ability to buy and sell municipal bonds online. The venture, called TheMuniCenter, combines their bond inventories and distribution capabilities to increase transaction volume and facilitate order flow. Solution WebCritical created a real-time, high-performance Java based trading application that is revolutionizing the bond marketplace. The application allows buyers and sellers to view real-time price updates from a Web-based application and directly connect to the inventory to provide and execute live trades. After studying the bond market and working with bond traders, the information architecture was developed to support search and analysis of millions of bonds. Additionally, WebCritical created a logo and brand identity establishing TheMuniCenter as a leader in the financial market place. Additional work provided by WebCritical included: Special consideration was given to create navigation enabling quick access to information and tools, without crowding screen space. A consistent vocabulary both with graphics and terminology ensured accuracy and ease of use. The application was developed for access across multiple platforms, browsers and operating systems. The solution leverages leading-edge technologies such as JMS, BEA’s WebLogic, Tibco RV, and IBM MQ, to create a platform that is flexible enough to support multiple products such as Treasuries and Corporate Bonds, process thousands of transactions per second, and provide complex search and trade capabilities though an intuitive user interface. Additionally, WebCritical provided infrastructure management services for the selection of a site hosting partner and the deployment of TheMuniCenter application into staging and production environments. Results TheMuniCenter is an online marketplace providing improved liquidity and transparency for the municipal bond market. Participants display their inventory across a Web marketplace with live, executable prices to other buyers and sellers. By accessing TheMuniCenter, traders and brokers can search for specific municipal-bond issues as well as trade municipal securities in real-time.