ACADEMIA

IBM announced that E*TRADE Korea has selected IBM's Smarter Computing approach to information technology to support its growth in the increasingly competitive and complex financial services market. With enhanced online services, E*TRADE Korea's 200,000 customers will be able to more quickly access up-to-date account information, stock quotes, community bulletin boards and online help features to better manage their financial portfolios. In addition, the new E*TRADE Korea online trading system based on IBM Power Systems will have the capacity to settle up to 970,000 transactions per hour in real-time – 16 percent faster than with the previous technology platform based on Oracle/Sun servers.

Korea currently has the world's second largest online trading market, with over 40 percent of trades conducted online, according to the Korea Securities Dealers Association (KSDA). E*TRADE Korea offers trading in Korea Stock Exchange (KSE) listed securities, as well as KOSDAQ equities, futures, options, beneficiary certificates and mutual funds. To better respond to fast-changing market conditions and customer demand for new services, E*TRADE Korea worked with IBM Business Partner LG CNS to replace its existing Oracle/Sun Solaris systems with IBM POWER7 processor-based systems to gain higher system utilization, availability and flexibility. By matching its IT workload to a system that's optimized for the task, E*TRADE Korea is increasing its IT services capacity while keeping costs low.

"Our goal is to secure a more advanced level of IT competitiveness than other companies by delivering better customer experiences," said Hoon Ki Jung, CIO and Managing Director for E*TRADE Korea. "With IBM Power Systems, E*TRADE Korea will be able to establish a stable and optimized IT environment that supports the company's future business growth, while increasing our current operational efficiency and cost effectiveness."

With the new technology infrastructure platform, E*TRADE Korea will be able to directly integrate its front-end business applications with back-end processes that are linked to the Korea Stock Exchange, resulting in higher transaction results per hour. In addition, E*TRADE Korea will be able to quickly analyze customer activities to draw insights for the company's up-selling and cross-selling marketing efforts. E*TRADE Korea will also be able to utilize the new platform for business application development, shortening the time it takes to deliver new products and services to customers in its core business areas.

"E*TRADE Korea required a secure and robust IT platform to support its enhanced financial products and services, and chose IBM Power Systems for its unparalleled performance and stability," said Kyunghoon Cho, Vice President, IBM Korea. "Like E*TRADE Korea, a number of securities companies in Korea are turning to a Smarter Computing model from IBM to improve customer service and support their rapid business growth in this fast moving market."