SCIENCE

Platform Computing has announced that Svenska Handelsbanken has adopted Platform Symphony to power high-performance analytics with grid computing. Platform Symphony provides Svenska Handelsbanken with a single grid which delivers distributed compute capacity for multiple business-critical applications.

Svenska Handelsbanken initially engaged with Platform Computing in September 2009 as it sought to maximise hardware resources and improve data centre efficiency. Prior to the installation, the bank was building and maintaining its own internal system. Svenska Handelsbanken now has the flexibility to add new compute infrastructure and respond to hardware issues transparently. The deployment of Platform Symphony has increased hardware utilisation and is expected to reduce application development costs.

One of the key strategic functions of the grid is to run core applications for front office applications. The third party solution that provides these applications is SunGard's Front Arena, a global capital markets solution that delivers position control across multiple asset classes and business lines. The applications are used by many areas of the bank including the equities division. New risk regulations in Sweden require running more risk scenarios to support better risk management and planning, which in turn, require more compute power. The grid effectively delivers this through more effective resource pooling and workload management.

"The Swedish banking landscape is continually evolving and we are committed to providing first-class services to our customers and having the right technical infrastructure allows us to be more agile than our competitors," said Peter Magnusson, head of systems development, trading systems, Svenska Handelsbanken. "After an evaluation process of the grid marketplace, we choose Platform Computing as a partner."

"Sweden is an exciting new market for Platform Computing and Handelsbanken is our first major banking client in the Nordic region, and we believe our grid computing expertise and world-class technology will deliver Svenska Handelsbanken the strategic business results it requires," said Charles Jarvis, vice president financial services, EMEA, Platform Computing. "We are confident that enabling high performance analytics with grid computing provides Svenska Handelsbanken a competitive edge over its peers as they deliver industry-leading services to customers."

"We are pleased to be working alongside Platform Computing to help Handelsbanken scale its resources, run calculations more quickly and improve efficiencies," commented Nils Unden, chief technology officer, SunGard Front Arena business unit.

Platform's flagship financial industry solution, Platform Symphony underpins core risk and analytics systems for the largest investment banks and other financial institutions around the world.  By managing grids composed of thousands of CPUs and optimising the application workloads across shared resource pools, IT departments are better able to support multiple lines of business in response to business priority. With Platform Symphony, organisations can model pricing algorithms with more fidelity against a broader set of risk factors. This increase in modeling capacity allows firms to have high confidence in their quantification of risk.