System News for Sun Users

Oracle Receives SWIFTReady Payment Label 2011

2011-09-19T16:00:00+01:00

Oracle announced that Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking 11.2.0 has received the SWIFTReady Payment Label 2011. The SWIFTReady label identifies products that demonstrate compliance with SWIFT standards, messaging services, and connectivity; integrate efficiently in the SWIFT environment; increase traffic automation; and support straight-through processing (STP). SWIFT, which supplies secure messaging services and interface software to wholesale financial entities, runs an annual program for determining the SWIFT-compliance of third-party software applications for the financial services sector.

Oracle Financial Services Revenue Management and Billing on Exadata

2011-09-19T16:00:00+01:00

Results of performance tests demonstrate that Oracle Financial Services Revenue Management and Billing 2.2 running on a full rack Oracle Exadata Database Machine X2-2 can deliver unprecedented performance and scalability. In the test, a billion transactions were validated, mapped and aggregated into 200 million transaction groups. These groups were then priced into billable charges. Running on Oracle Exadata Database Machine, the application priced 9,523 billable charges per second, enabling financial services organizations to process pricing requests for 100 million accounts in six hours. Ultimately 100 million bills can be generated in a single monthly run using a 13 hour batch window.

Oracle's Exadata Banking and Financial Services Customers Numbers Continue to Increase

2011-05-18T16:00:00+01:00

Oracle continues to expand its banking and financial services EMEA customer base with Exadata solutions. Recently, Helm Bank, Sacombank, and Australian Finance Group have implemented Oracle Exadata family products to manage their respective operations. Colombia's Helm Bank platform now includes Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking running on Oracle Exadata Database Machine. Plans are afoot to implement Oracle's Siebel CRM in the near future. Sacombank of Vietnam has implemented the country's first Oracle Exadata Database Machine to be deployed in Vietnam, which provides data warehousing. Integration with Oracle Business Intelligence (BI) gives Sacombank with a single 360-degree view of the business and a powerful platform for a wide spectrum of business intelligence tasks ranging from predictive analytics to real-time strategic and tactical decision support throughout the organization. Down Under, the Australian Finance Group (AFG) has deployed the Oracle Exadata Database Machine to run Oracle�'s Siebel CRM, Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition, and the Oracle E-Business Suite. AFG also uses Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) for high availability and Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition for information management.

Oracle Exadata Database Machine Transforms Operations for Banco Santander (Brasil) S.A.

2011-04-08T16:00:00+01:00

By adopting Oracle Exadata Database Machine and Oracle Database 11g Banco Santander (Brasil) S.A. has achieved an eight-fold performance improvement in dozens of transactions, enabling the financial services company to provide business users faster access to data while also gaining a ten-fold rate of data compression, resulting in cost reductions in servers, power, real estate and maintenance. Banco Santander was assisted in this implementation by Oracle's Advanced Customer Services, Oracle Consulting and Oracle University. The company now runs the most advanced OLTP (online transaction processing) and data warehousing system in the market. Many processes, which Banco Santander was able to run only on a weekly basis with its legacy system can now be run daily.

FrontRunner 2.0: Object Trading Delivers Even Faster Cross Platform DMA Integration

2011-03-17T16:00:00+01:00

Object Trading has released FrontRunner API 2.0, which now supports customers' Direct Market Access client-system connections via their easily integrated FrontRunner API across Linux, Solaris and Windows platforms, allowing rapid (up to 25 percent faster than existing high-speed connection methods), customized development of connectivity on these platforms to over 50 destinations world-wide. At the same time, Object Trading stresses, FrontRunner also continues to natively support existing FIX-based interfaces for clients trading via FIX 4.2 and FIX 5.0 and algorithmic or front-end vendors' integration layers; including popular choices such as Trading Technologies X_Trader and the TT FIX Adapter for Asian markets, integration recently completed by Object Trading and launched in January 2011.

Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud for Financial Services

2011-03-07T17:00:00+01:00

Watch a replay of the webcast "Oracle Exalogis Elastic Cloud: Extreme-Performance Java Platform for Financial Services" (registration and log-in required) to learn how your financial institution can benefit from adopting Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud. Yogesh Rami, Director, Product Marketing, Exalogic, Oracle; Ambreesh Khanna, VP, Technology and Systems, Financial Services Global Business Unit, Oracle; and Craig Blitz, Senior Principal Product Manager, Coherence Product Management, Oracle, explain how Oracle Exalogic offers an IT solution that is highly scalable for growth and reliable for maximum customer service while at the same time being easy to maintain at the lowest cost and with minimal downtime, enabling IT departments to maximize the utilization of hardware resources and help lower transaction costs.

Oracle Reveleus Liquidity Risk Management

2011-02-14T17:00:00+01:00

Performance testing of Oracle Reveleus Liquidity Risk Management on the Oracle Exadata Database Machine X2-2 revealed extreme performance for liquidity computations, enabling financial institutions to now estimate liquidity gaps under baseline and stressed conditions and devise appropriate contingency funding strategies in minutes, Oracle reports. Specifically, Oracle Reveleus Liquidity Risk Management running on Oracle Exadata Database Machine X2-2 calculated business-as-usual liquidity gaps for 370 million cash flows across 65 million accounts in just 69 minutes. After applying modified behavior assumptions to simulate adverse market conditions, stressed liquidity gaps were calculated in only 10 minutes. Oracle reveals that testing was completed using a full-rack Oracle Exadata Database Machine X2-2 running Oracle Database 11g and Oracle Real Application Clusters with the Oracle Reveleus Liquidity Risk Management and the application tier running on Oracle's Sun SPARC Enterprise M9000 server running Oracle Solaris.

Oracle Exadata Database Machine Delivers Extreme Performance for Profitability Measures

2011-02-11T17:00:00+01:00

Oracle reports that the Oracle Financial Services Profitability Management solution running on the Oracle Exadata Database Machine computed profitability for 172 allocation rules across 250 million accounts and more than 1 billion transactions in only 4 hours and 45 minutes. These results, Oracle contends, demonstrate the practical possibility of generating detailed profitability reports at the account level on a daily, even intra-day basis. The performance testing was performed using a full-rack Oracle Exadata Database Machine running Oracle Database 11g and Oracle Real Application Clusters. The application tier was installed on Oracle's Sun SPARC Enterprise M9000 server running Oracle Solaris to drive the load.

Oracle Financial Services Analytical Applications Delivers Extreme Performance

2011-02-11T17:00:00+01:00

Completed performance testing with Oracle Reveleus Basel II on the Oracle Exadata Database Machine X2-2 computed risk-weighted asset calculations on 65 million exposures in only 1 hour and 29 minutes. This reflects the exposures typically found in the world�'s largest diversified financial institutions, such as the Bank for International Settlements�' (BIS) Advanced Internal Ratings-Based (AIRB) approach. Such results demonstrate that global financial institutions can dramatically reduce the lead times required to perform key analyses like stress testing, liquidity risk management and profitability and respond to increasing regulator demands, like Basel III. Oracle notes further that, the extreme performance on Oracle Exadata Database Machine X2-2 also creates new flexibility to help institutions comply with increasingly complex regulatory processes for capital requirements that often require multiple resubmissions with changes to assumptions and calculations. Oracle Reveleus Basel II is part of the Oracle Financial Services Analytical Applications family of Risk, Finance, Compliance and Customer Insight solutions, and currently used by demanding tier-one institutions around the world.

Oracle Shuffles its Financial Services Global Business Unit

2010-05-07T16:00:00+01:00

Oracle's Financial Services Global Business Unit (FSGBU) is shuffling personnel and introducing a new member to its deck. Frank Brienzi is joining the FSGBU as General Manager and the board of directors of Oracle Financial Services Software Limited (OFSS). Accompanying Brienzi on the BOD of OFSS is Joseph John, who is the executive vice president of the banking products division of OFSS. The new Chief Operating Officer for FSGBU is R. Ravisankar, while Rajesh Hukku is now Chief Strategy Officer of Oracle's Financial Services.

Performance and Availability Makes GlassFish Clusters Ideal for Financial Services

2010-04-27T16:00:00+01:00

It was about two years ago when mobile financial services provider Fundamo began searching for an application server for its Enterprise Platform, a comprehensive set of mobile financial services that includes Fundamo Enterprise Edition, Mobile Wallet, Mobile Banking, and Mobile Money Transfer. After evaluating several vendors and evaluating features, cost and potential license agreements, GlassFish came out on top. Fundamo's chief software architect Cedric Franz reports the performance of the GlassFish server with OpenMQ is excellent.

Customers Demand RFID Capability for IT Assets

2010-02-02T17:00:00+01:00

RFID has found an application other than merchandise tracking. Now, major financial institutions such as Wells Fargo and Bank of America are using RFID as an asset control technology to track their IT equipment. Responding to the needs of its customers, Sun has begun installing RFID tags in the products it markets at the point of manufacture, reports Mary Catherine O'Connor in RFID Journal.

Sun Identity Manager Improves on Financial Service Provider's Identity Solution

2009-09-18T16:00:00+01:00

The Swiss companies Bâloise Insurance and Bâloise Bank SoBa operate jointly as a focused financial services provider, a combination of insurer and bank. Both entities are known for their integrated solutions in the areas of insurance, pension provision and asset formation for private clients and small and medium-sized businesses. The companies found an improved identity management solution from Sun.

Customer Snapshot: Sun Helps Luxembourg Bank Cut IT Costs

2009-06-20T16:00:00+01:00

Sun technology meets a powerful banking customer challenge by providing LBBW Luxembourg Bank with a solution that helps it cut IT costs and supports its growth. Sun's professional services designed a high-performance infrastructure built with Sun SPARC Servers and Solaris 10 to create a flexible, scalable infrastructure for their new Avaloq application.

South African Company Praises GlassFish and its Sun Stack

2009-06-20T16:00:00+01:00

Watch a short video to find out how Fundamo, a mobile financial services company based in Cape Town, South Africa, is using Sun stack hardware, operating system, and GlassFish to build their infrastructure. They are using Sun's products because of its many features and the greater support it offers when compared with other open source application services.

Algo Financial Risk Management Software Runs Great on Sun Fire X4270

2009-05-06T16:00:00+01:00

The Algorithmics Risk Analysis "Algo" application, which is financial simulation software, runs great on the Sun Fire X4270, according to Sun Blogger, Jeffrey Taylor. He explained that Solaris users can use such features as TurboBoost and HyperThreading, which help to create an ideal environment for the Algo software.

Sun, Intel and GigaSpaces Announce New Benchmark Performance Results

2009-04-01T16:00:00+01:00

Sun Fire x4450 servers using Intel Xeon 7460 processors with six cores per CPU running Solaris 10 Operating System and Sun's Java HotSpot Virtual Machine and using GigaSpaces eXtreme Application Platform (XAP) have set new benchmark performance results. The combined platform performed 1.8 million reads per second and 1.1 million writes per second, with sub-one-millisecond latency. It also topped 16,000 page generations per second with six-millisecond latency over a local area network.

Virtualization for Reuters Market Data Systems (RMDS)

2009-02-16T17:00:00+01:00

Solaris Containers on next-generation multi-core platforms is giving customers using Reuters Market Data Systems (RMDS) in Solaris environments increased capacity, improved efficiencies, reduced latency, and overall enhanced performance while also reducing total cost of ownership. Sun and Thomson Reuters claim recent benchmarks have demonstrated that RMDS performs better in a virtualized environment with Solaris Containers, which delivers strong performance improvements across a significantly reduced hardware footprint, than one running RMDS on a number of individual Sun server machines.

Leading Spanish Bank Caja Madrid Implements Sun Open Suite for SWIFT

2008-12-29T17:00:00+01:00

One of Spain's leading savings banks, Caja de Ahorros y Monte de Piedad de Madrid, or Caja Madrid, has implemented the Sun Open Suite for SWIFT solution platform to serve its approximately 2,000 banking offices and more than 4,600 supermarket locations throughout Spain. Both Sun and implementation partner Grupo Acotel collaborated in assisting Caja Madrid to consolidate its bank-to-bank message flows with the SWIFT suite.

1.3 Million-Messages-Per-Second Benchmark on Sun Server with CoolThreads Technology

2008-09-22T16:00:00+01:00

Sun and GigiSpaces announced new benchmark performance results that address the scalability needs of capital market customers.

Sun's SPARC Enterprise T5140 and T5240 system architecture incorporates third-generation CoolThreads Chip Multithreading (CMT) technology that provides users increased and extremely scalable computational density while staying within variously constrained envelopes of power and cooling.

Grupo Acotel Builds New SWIFT Services on Sun Infrastructure

2008-09-15T16:00:00+01:00

Grupo ACOTEL is made up of several highly specialized IT companies (Communiction Management, IT Management, System Engineering and Software Delivery). Grupo Acotel announced that it will launch new SWIFT-ready services to help corporate and bank customers in Spain better manage financial communications via the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) platform.

"Our customers are looking for a hassle-free way to connect to the SWIFT network. While it is important for them to automate and standardize their financial processes, they cannot afford programs associated with high upfront and maintenance costs," said Carlos Pastor, CEO Red Financiera - Grupo Acotel SWIFT Service Bureau. "We selected Sun's Open Suite for SWIFT solution as it is the most cost-effective and innovative available today."

Sun Launches Open Suite for SWIFT for Financial Institutions and Corporate Treasuries

2008-09-15T16:00:00+01:00

Sun Open Suite for SWIFT is a complete end-to-end software and hardware infrastructure solution to help corporate treasuries and financial institutions kick-start fast and secure SWIFTNet integration.

"As a market leader in payments, Sun is once again ahead of competition in launching one of the industry's first complete and open SWIFTNet-integration solution," said Ambreesh Khanna, Global Head of Financial Services, Sun Microsystems. "Given the current dynamics of the financial industry, we need to provide innovative technology solutions that are cost-effective, risk-free and easy to deploy. We are confident that with the Sun Open Suite for SWIFT, our customers can turn cost centers into opportunities for new revenue streams."

Germany's apoBank Implements Implements Sun Information Lifecycle Management Solution

2008-09-08T16:00:00+01:00

apoBank, Germany's largest cooperative bank, has implemented a Sun StorageTek information lifecycle management (ILM) infrastructure that includes a Sun enterprise disk storage system with remote replication, tape libraries and management software, all connected via a storage area network (SAN).

Sun White Paper: The Road to Mobile Banking

2008-09-08T16:00:00+01:00

The Sun white paper "The Road to Mobile Banking" explains how the climate has changed to make mobile banking seem a viable option for financial services.

Sun Awarded SWIFTReady Financial EAI Label for the 10th Consecutive Year!

2008-08-04T16:00:00+01:00

For the tenth consecutive year, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) has awarded the SWIFTReady Label in the category of Financial Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) to Sun Microsystems for its Sun Java Composite Application Platform Suite (Java CAPS). SWIFT has been raising the bar annually for EAI vendors, asking them to fully adopt the SWIFT standards in order to enable SWIFT participants to achieve better straight-through processing (STP) rates over the SWIFT network. The imposition of increasingly demanding standards makes this tenth consecutive award to Sun no small accomplishment.

Server Purchases Up in Financial Services Industry in 2006

2007-04-09T16:00:00+01:00

Two recent surveys provide a barometer on the financial services sector and its IT spending. Grant Thornton�'s 14th Annual Survey of Bank Executives indicates that 73 percent of bankers plan on increasing their technology spending in 2007. Gartner has gathered statistics that show the financial services industry accounted for $13.2 billion in server purchases in 2006, up 3.2 percent from the prior year.

Germany's apoBank Implements Sun ILM Infrastructure

2007-04-09T16:00:00+01:00

Germany's Deutsche Apotheker und Ärztebank or apoBank is the country's largest cooperative bank with more than 300,000 customers and assets of 31 billion EUR (41 billion USD). apoBank serves individuals and organizations involved in social welfare occupations, including pharmacists, physicians, dentists and veterinary surgeons.

Irish Life Implements Sun StorageTek Solutions

2007-01-08T17:00:00+01:00

Gordon Smith, writing for siliconrepublic.com, reports on the new storage management system implemented by Irish Life & Permanent (IL&P) as a key component in the company's long-term backup and disaster recovery strategy. The system, implemented by Sun and including two Sun StorageTek Streamline SL8500 tape libraries and the Sun StorageTekSM Virtual Storage Manager system, will centralize the management of the financial provider�'s backup operations, reduce its storage management costs and support the company�'s disaster recovery plans.

Sun Develops Insurance Industry IT Solutions

2007-01-08T17:00:00+01:00

Sun's collaboration with insurance industry executives has resulted in a number of solutions designed for that sector that include comprehensive data management, business intelligence, data warehousing, security and information lifecycle management solutions. Sun's vendor-neutral Open Systems architecture supports best-of-breed applications from its industry-leading partners to deliver a standards-based, growth-enabled infrastructure for ensured flexibility and longevity.

AdminServer on Sun Delivers Improved TCO to Insurance Industry

2007-01-03T17:00:00+01:00

Legacy systems typically cannot support a variety of diverse business rules within a given application with the result that, for each new insurance product a company wishes to introduce, new servers need to be deployed. The tangle of systems and applications necessary to support all of a company's insurance products rapidly turns into a headache for all concerned. AdminServer on Sun is a viable alternative to doing business with an unnecessarily complex and costly IT infrastructure.