Case Studies: Financial Services

NASDAQ, which became the world’s first electronic stock market in 1971, and remains the largest U.S. electronic stock market, is constantly looking for more-efficient ways to serve its members. As the organization prepared to retire its aging large mainframe computers, it deployed Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 on two 4-node clusters to support its Market Data Dissemination System (MDDS). Every trade that is processed in the NASDAQ marketplace goes through the MDDS system, with SQL Server 2005 handling some 5,000 transactions per second at market open. SQL Server 2005 simultaneously handles about 100,000 queries a day, using SQL Server 2005 Snapshot Isolation to support real-time queries against the data without slowing the database. NASDAQ is enjoying a lower total cost of ownership compared to the large mainframe computer system that the SQL Server 2005 deployment has replaced.

Leading Romanian insurer Allianz-Tiriac Asigurari needed to provide its field staff with real-time access to its enterprise applications. Without access to current customer data, the field employees could not accurately calculate premiums for offers or determine whether customers had valid claims. The company decided to give its field staff Windows Mobile® powered devices. In October 2006, it began developing a client application to connect the devices to the company’s internal systems by using the Microsoft® .NET Compact Framework. The project was completed in just one month. Today, field employees get the information they need to make accurate offers and notify claims, saving the company money and improving accuracy. Productivity has risen by 30 percent and costs have fallen 20 percent by eliminating duplicate data entry, and the company has a solution it can extend in the future

Facing massive data growth, longer processing times, and hardware reaching the end of its useful life, Bank Leu, a leading Swiss private bank, needed to upgrade or replace its management accounting system. To enable this highly complex system to keep up with the bank’s expanding business, Bank Leu and Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner Trivadis built a solution based on Microsoft SQL Server™ 2005 Enterprise Edition (64-bit) and using Microsoft Visual Studio® 2005. The solution is expected to increase the productivity of management accountants by up to 40 percent, enabling the bank to deliver more insight to users, while reducing data complexity. The solution is only half as expensive as comparable alternatives and requires merely 20 percent of the custom code that would have been needed without SQL Server 2005.

HSBC acquired a large local bank in Mexico with more than 1,400 branch locations and wanted to take control of its decentralized IT environment. Manual deployment of software applications and security updates could take months, and the company lacked tools to monitor its IT resources effectively. To improve system management, HSBC Mexico implemented a centralized solution based on the Microsoft® Windows Server® 2003 operating system and the Active Directory® service, Systems Management Server 2003, and Operations Manager 2005. Now the company can automatically install updates, get new financial service software to market quickly, and cut IT travel costs. It can also monitor systems in real time and plan for change and business growth. HSBC Mexico estimates that effective management of IT resources will help it support up to 30 percent growth with its existing infrastructure.

Rapid developments in technology and changes to the banking landscape have left many financial institutions with an inefficient IT infrastructure. For one major Australian financial institution, these changes meant it was maintaining four different intranets across three platforms. To overcome its Web content management problems, the company engaged Microsoft Gold Certified Partner OBS to find a solution that would enable it to build a single global intranet. OBS and the company developed a content management system using Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 Enterprise Edition. This pilot project showed the technology had the potential to significantly improve the company’s intranet issues, workflows and staff productivity. Independent analyst BearingPoint measured the results of the pilot, finding that full deployment of the solution across the company’s global operations could result in a saving of A$2.3 million per annum.