Unisys New Zealand subsidiary has successfully transformed the Co-operative Bank’s IT infrastructure using Unisys ClearPath Forward systems. The software-based fabric architecture of ClearPath Forward provides a flexible environment, across a range of operating systems, to enable delivery of core banking matched with capacity to deliver new products and digital services to customer.
Being able to deliver new products and services is a key component of the bank’s customer acquisition and long term growth strategy.
The modernised environment enables the bank to deliver core banking services to its customers, whilst also providing flexible and high performance spare capacity to support the bank in offering new products and services. Unisys ClearPath Forward infrastructure provides enhanced security for crucial client and business information, as well as greater scalability to support the addition of new services. In addition, Unisys ClearPath ePortal, a powerful, highly automated application modernisation solution, is a critical component supporting the bank’s SOA environment in delivering in-branch, mobile and online banking solutions.
The bank replaced the Unisys ClearPath Libra 690 and ES7000 servers with ClearPath Forward 4390 fabrics to deliver a highly available infrastructure running MCP, Windows and VMware. As a result, the bank has experienced increased throughput to feed mobile and online banking, significantly reduced batch times and data transfer speeds between different operating systems to near 50 Gbps.
“We invested in refreshing and modernising our underlying IT infrastructure to create an environment that supports our bi-modal IT delivery needs now and into the future. We get the best of both worlds by having the performance and security we have always valued, combined with the flexibility the Forward fabric offers to help us deliver new and enhanced services to our customers,” said Annette Natta, general manager of Information Services at The Co-operative Bank. “Unisys continues to provide flexibility and innovation in line with our business strategy – that’s why they have remained our technology partner since 1967.”
The ClearPath Forward systems feature a software-based fabric computing architecture that runs on Intel Xeon processors. The fabric links all computing resources and components via a high-speed interconnect, with Unisys secure partitioning (sPar) software managing all application workloads. Each partition has dedicated resources for each workload, eliminating resource contention.
Each ClearPath Forward system can support nodes running either the Unisys MCP or OS 2200 operating environment, as well as those running Linux or Windows. The systems also support VMware or Docker for standard virtualisation that complements secure partitioning. Applications running in all environments on a given system can interoperate seamlessly over the fabric. This flexibility across different operating environments gives the Co-operative Bank greater freedom in choosing applications.
Tony Windever, vice president and general manager, Enterprise Solutions, Asia Pacific said: “Today’s ‘always on’ banking environment requires high speed, resilient and secure computing infrastructure to run the banking applications and services to customers. We are excited to be able to continue to bring that experience and innovation to the Co-operative Bank.”
