Several of the largest players in the municipal-bond market, including Merrill Lynch & Co., the Salomon Smith Barney unit of Citigroup Inc. and Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co., are creating a new service that allows brokers and institutional investors the ability to buy and sell municipal bonds online. The venture, called "TheMuniCenter," will combine the bond inventories and distribution capabilities of four of the largest players in the municipal bond market. By accessing MuniCenter's site, investors and brokers can search for specific municipal-bond issues as well as trade municipal securities.

In partnership with GTT, WebCritical is designing and implementing a scalable technical architecture that will support multiple products (beyond Municipal bonds) and thousands of transactions per second. Additionally, WebCritical is documenting the functional requirements, developing the JAVA code behind this complex trading application, and presenting the functionality through a sophisticated yet intuitive user interface.