High Performance Banking

This last month I talked to a few analysts about the market direction of core banking modernization, and I was pleased to hear that these initiatives continue to advance.  Of course, not all banks are willing to give up their legacy systems as part of the drive for technology modernization, especially in the area of core banking operations, but more and more banks are looking to implement modular solutions on cost effective technology to deliver innovative products, improve efficiency and lower costs. For those banks willing to embrace change, some of the main questions asked relate to platform scalability and transaction throughput. How well will a new system handle peak workloads experienced during end of day processing, or transaction spikes at month end? As my business grows, how well will the system scale to accommodate a growth in new business, or entry into new markets? These are all key questions that need to be answered by the application provider, and the platform vendor.

Microsoft + Temenos = High Performance Banking
As you may have read, Microsoft and Temenos announced a global alliance in late 2009. One of the objectives was to collaborate closely and commit resources to fully optimize the performance of Temenos T24 on the Microsoft platform of SQL Server and Windows Server. This week, I'd like to point to an example outcome of that collaboration that addresses the questions about performance and scalability. A recent benchmark was designed to simulate a real world bank environment of 15M customers with 25M accounts, spread across 2,000 branches. That's a fair-sized institution for any mature banking market. The results show very impressive online transaction processing rates of 3,400 transactions per second, demonstrating the solution's ability to handle peak workloads. Just as impressively, the platform also scaled near linearly, therefore giving banks added confidence when estimating the impact of future growth. You can read more about the benchmark here. Temenos and Microsoft will be exhibiting together at Sibos in Amsterdam this year, so I encourage you to stop by to learn more.