Financial institution UBS Switzerland is connecting to SWIFTNet, a cutting-edge technology in the financial services industry that is geared toward improving market efficiency and reducing risk. UBS has been working with the industry cooperative SWIFT and Sun Microsystems to link its internal financial messaging network with SWIFTNet services on SWIFT's secure IP network.

Michael Walther, regional manager, Securities Industry Division, SWIFT, explains SWIFTNet: It is a "highly secure, highly available and resilient, private network where members can interact with correspondents, customers and trusted third parties in real time. It has fully embedded public key infrastructure (PKI) security services and offers a portfolio of products and services for the secure and reliable communication of data."

UBS's migration project began in 2002, and is being carried out in three phases to its scheduled completion date of 2004. During the project, UBS Switzerland will renew front-end software. UBS branches in other countries will access the new IP network through this hub, which will use the SWIFTNet Link software running on the SolarisTM Operating Environment (Solaris OE) to connect with SWIFT's secure IP network. Phase one consists of updating banking application software at the front end in 2002. Phase two will continue to move from UBS's old protocol X.25 to IP in 2003. Phase three will deliver continuous linked settlement and other advanced services such as FileAct via Alliance Gateway in 2003/2004.

In the first implementation, UBS Switzerland has used two Sun EnterpriseTM 4500 servers running the Solaris OE in parallel with a third server as a back-up and a fourth deployed in a test environment. The openness of the operating environment means that applications using this distributed client/server architecture can be integrated with other applications and platforms. The Sun platform provides them with the openness and scalability to support future solutions.

With the help of Sun's consulting, training and support, SWIFTNet connectivity can be placed in an overall architecture that maximizes straight-through processing and enables the most efficient business processes built around financial messaging.

The UBS IT team reports that the project is going well. "Sun is one of our preferred suppliers at UBS Switzerland and we have a well-established relationship with the company. Its platform can support up to 40 messages per second, depending on the size of the message. We currently store and forward more than 100,000 SWIFT messages per day. We expect that this volume will double in future, but with Sun, we have the scalability to deal with increased volume and other requirements."

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