Symphony CEO confirms plans to forge partnership with Google
Symphony CEO, David Gurle, has been talking to the press about the firms relationship with Google highlighting that it is Google corporate, not Google Ventures or Google Capital that invested in the startup last month. Gurle stated that this is indicative of the partnership that the two firms plan to forge. Symphony will use Google technology to complement its own offering, the core of which is a secure messaging system. Communication is at the centre of business interactions and the nervous system of financial services according to Gurle.

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The chief executive of a new messaging firm, that could rival Bloomberg's service, has spoken of the merits of being backed by the technology giant Google . "Our partnership with Google goes beyond just a financial investment. First of all it's a Google corporate who invested in us, not Google Ventures or Google Capital, and that speaks to the extent of the partnership we are going to forge together," David Gurle, the CEO of Symphony Communications Services, told CNBC Wednesday. "We are going to use their cloud computing technology; they have other technologies such as Google Docs, Google Sheets and Google Apps that will complement our offering. So this is just the beginning of a long term partnership with Google and we are very excited about it." Dubbed as the "Whatsapp for business," Symphony provides an instant messaging system for financial firms and individuals, to put all their digital communications on one secure, centralized platform. As the business world gets to grips with a rapid change in technology, communication is at the center of business interactions, Gurle argues, adding that messaging has become the "nervous system of financial services."

Symphony previously raised a total of $66 million from over a dozen financial firms including Goldman Sachs . However, this October, the Wall Street-backed messaging firm, raised over $100 million in a fresh round of funding from investors such as Google, Societe Generale and UBS . What made this year's funding round different was that the technology giant, Google, was involved, demonstrating how the company wants to expand from just financial firms. "We've been having requests from accounting firms to legal and health care firms. Everybody who is exchanging high-valued content needs something that is secure and compliant. And Symphony is designed for that," Gurle said, adding that over 50,000 users have signed up since it launched in September 2015. Symphony is one of the latest services to rival other financial market messaging services like those provided by Thomson Reuters and Bloomberg.

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Symphony wants to make sure Wall Street firms who use the technology are complying with Wall Street regulations, so its designed a system which safeguards against cyber threats, while providing the tools that help customers to meet those regulations. In recent months, the startup has been described as the "Bloomberg killer," however, while Gurle sees overlaps, he believes Symphony's functions go beyond that of Bloomberg's terminal system. "It is an honor to be compared to a company like Bloomberg. Our objective is to solve a very important problem in the market today and that problem of secure communications and connecting businesses in a trustworthy way is something that goes beyond Bloomberg's mission," he said. "We are after much broader needs that Bloomberg addresses and we are going to continue to march along and build our organization and our business in a steady fashion, with the backing of the world's most financially important firms as well as Google, and we're going to continue to forge ahead." Disclosure: Bloomberg is a competitor of CNBC in reporting and distributing business news on the web and on television.

