Enhance system performance during business critical peak periods, eliminate service level disruptions and improve flexibility in core application environment.
Done.
Using the scalability potential of four Unisys ClearPath Plus Dorado servers with pay-for-use metering technology to handle peak periods, Real-Time Center (RTC) has greatly improved service levels to end users while reducing operational costs by up to $500,000 per year.
Secure Business Operation
IT outsourcing and banking software
At a Glance:Real-Time Center• Financial Services |
Solution at a Glance:• Four Unisys ClearPath Plus
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Breakthrough:
Flexible Infrastructure Aligned to Business Needs
Enhancing its robust infrastructure, based on Unisys ClearPath Plus Dorado servers, with a metering business solution enabled RTC to deliver faster processing on demand and speed up software development cycles.
Metrics
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Cost: Operational costs cut by $500,000 per year
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Speed: Removed system performance bottlenecks and reduced application development time from several days to one
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Power: Increased performance ceilings of production and development systems by a factor of more than three to 1,600 MIPS
“Using the Unisys solution our reporting response times stay within the agreed timeframe, even during extreme peak load periods."
Marcel Keller, Manager, Strategic Planning, RTC
Business Challenge: Meeting Seasonality without Increasing Complexity or Costs
Real-Time Center (RTC) in Switzerland develops a range of specialist software and customised business solutions for the finance sector. Its core business is the development of integrated and flexible banking software packages, including IBIS*, which is designed for retail banks. Over 70 Swiss banks rely on the IBIS banking platform. They represent a balance-sheet total in excess of $100 billion. Additionally, RTC delivers banking services, including infrastructure processing, database administration, network security, support for internet and mobile banking and desktop support for around 20,000 workstations.
With annual revenue of $115 million, the company employs more than 500 people. It manages two fully redundant operation data centres in the Berne region, from which it runs millions of transactions each day. Throughout the year, RTC experiences predictable peak periods based on the monthly and quarter-end processing capacity requirements of its banking customers. However,
high stock exchange activity or unplanned transactions can cause sudden and unexpected fluctuations in the processing requirements.
Marcel Keller, Manager, Strategic Planning, RTC, says: "Our most critically busy periods are at month end and quarter-end, when all our banking customers complete their reporting. While we are equipped to handle this, any unexpected peak-loads, such as high stock exchange activity, impacted our processing. A spike in processing needs could affect our response times to customers and delay our batch job processing."
To compete with other service providers and maintain its reputation, RTC needed a next-generation IT infrastructure that could scale to meet changing business needs. Keller says: "If we couldn't handle peak loads it would impact not only our ability to meet service level agreements
(SLAs) with customers, but also our reputation. Our main challenge was to find the most economically viable solution to manage peak loads."
The company's software development business also needed to boost processing power, reduce software development cycles and improve time to market. Developers often needed to wait for an allocation of processing power before they could complete application testing, which hindered productivity somewhat. RTC used temporary workload (TW) keys from Unisys for extra short-term capacity to handle exceptional and unexpected loads. However the company needed a long-term cost-effective solution. In the event of business disruption, disaster recovery (DR) and back-up systems were in place to allow the company to recover quickly. RTC was looking for an alternative to TW keys, while also improving administration of back-up and recovery systems.
*IBIS = banking solution for universal, retail and asset management institutions
Solution: Infrastructure Transformation and Metering Solution with Experienced Partner
During an event in Antwerp in April 2004, Unisys demonstrated the principles of metering technology to RTC, such as load measurement and the establishment of an agreed
utilisation rate. Unisys has been a trusted hardware partner of RTC for more than 30 years, so it was natural for RTC to engage with Unisys for a solution to this particular challenge.
After intensive discussions with RTC, Unisys consultants were able to design a scalable and secure solution that was capable of allocating resources to provide on-demand computing power. To demonstrate business and operational value, Unisys completed various modelling examples and presentations on how metering would benefit RTC's operations. Keller says: "Unisys mapped our IT strategy, and designed a solution with metering that was a perfect fit for our performance needs."
By May 2005, a fully redundant-mirrored system, based on four Unisys ClearPath Plus Dorado 290 servers with metering technology, was in operation across two locations. Three of these servers are for production and the fourth is for the test environment. In the event of a disaster, each system is capable of fully backing up the other centre. The peripheral infrastructure, including disk storage and tape libraries, is mirrored across centres via dark fibre networks. This set-up is part of RTC's business continuity strategy.
Results: Agility, Security and Reliability at Reduced Costs
The new infrastructure not only provides enhanced computing performance, it also enables RTC to align computing performance to banking volume. Computing power of nearly 12,000 million instructions per second (MIPS) can be administratively handled from a common performance pool. This increased MIPS illustrates and underpins the agility of the system, as RTC can utilise computing performance as and when needed across all systems. Agility is key to the solution and just another proof of the unique flexibility of Unisys advanced licensing models unmatched in the industry.
The combination of flexibility and power provided by the solution boosts the productivity of software development. Keller says: "Unisys has allowed RTC to greatly improve efficiency in testing its applications in addition to improving development cycles. Today, developers receive virtually unlimited performance for application development and testing rather than having to wait for performance allocation on any of the test partitions or compete for MIPS with other teams. Developers' productivity has clearly increased as a result. Previously it took several days to recompile and remap up to 3,000 programs. Using the Unisys system, this can now be completed in just one day. And it can be executed in parallel with normal daily business without disruption."
"Metering has fully met our expectations. Previously capacity problems that we encountered when faced with a surge in processing demands have disappeared."
Marcel Keller, Manager, Strategic Planning, RTC
Unisys ClearPath Dorado Plus servers, combined with pay-for-use metering technology, provide the power to handle both predictable and unpredictable peak loads. The run times of processes, including nightly batch runs, has been dramatically reduced. This agility was especially important for the organisation, as it needed to be able to respond to increased processing demands from its financial firm customers.
Keller says: "The system has improved our reporting times, allowing RTC to complete standard batch runs within a short time frame. Using the Unisys solution our reporting response times stay within the agreed timeframe, even during extreme peak load periods."
Metering, and the flexibility to add processing resources when needed, makes TW keys obsolete. Additionally, as RTC operates both production centres from a performance pool, the company is also covered for disaster backup and recovery under the metering model. By eliminating the need for TW and DR keys on the previous system, RTC has achieved significant cost reductions of around $500,000 per year.
Keller says: "Unisys ClearPath system delivers the security and high-quality performance that is required and valued by the banking environment. For our operations management the most appreciated elements of the Unisys solution are the compatibility of software across our systems, together with ease of release implementation. This keeps our planned downtime at an absolute minimum, which is an important factor in our drive to achieve 100 per cent uptime. Metering has fully met our expectations. Previously capacity problems that we encountered when faced with a surge in processing demands have disappeared."
The Relationship: Trusted Partner with Commitment to Collaborate
RTC chose to work with Unisys because it backed up its proposition with a solid, proven long-term relationship. Keller says: "After more than 30 years of partnership, Unisys understood the requirements and expectations of RTC well and was able to propose a perfect solution. Requirements could be integrated under the pay-for-use model technically and contractually. The Unisys team was able to complete contract negotiations followed by professional implementation within just a few weeks."
