Credit Suisse establishes virtualisation technology company

Investment bank Credit Suisse has formed a new company that will bring its virtual infrastructure management technology to the commercial market.

The new Massachusetts-based unit, called DynamicOps, was formed in January and is funded by Credit Suisse's Next II venture group.

The business is headed by Rich Krueger, a former EVP at storage virtualisation company Incipient. Krueger also held management roles at LightSpeed Software, EMC and Conley Corporation.

Credit Suisse says it first deployed a virtual infrastructure in 2005 but realised that while virtualisation improved resource utilisation and business agility, it also increased operational complexity.

In response to this, the bank's research and development group began development of its virtual resource manager (VRM) technology two years ago. VRM now manages thousands of virtual desktops and servers at multiple Credit Suisse data centres in four locations worldwide.

"In the case where self-provisioning for virtualised servers has been deployed, VRM enabled us to reduce our provisioning lead times from weeks to minutes. This has resulted in more efficient server utilisation and lower capital costs," says Stephen Hilton, MD, enterprise servers and storage, Credit Suisse.

The bank says the software is already installed in other large IT organisations in financial services as well as different industries.

Karl Landert, CIO, Credit Suisse, says the establishment of DynamicOps provides the bank with the opportunity to realise a return on its software investment. The move also enables Credit Suisse to form and fund a software organisation that can help meet its current and future technology needs.

Research published by Microsoft earlier this year found that retail banks on both sides of the Atlantic are increasingly turning to virtualisation technologies to centralise deployment and management of IT resources, cut costs and save energy.

The KRC Research survey of 100 technology decision makers at UK and US retail banks found 58% are already implementing virtualisation across multiple aspects of their IT infrastructures.