By moving its hardware platform, operating system and applications to a Linux environment on Unisys ES7000/one Enterprise Servers, Redmayne-Bentley has achieved a tenfold increase in processing power, an 88 percent reduction in overnight processing times and significantly enhanced security.

With 31 branches across the UK, Redmayne-Bentley is pre-eminent in private client stockbroking. The company needed a secure real-time infrastructure that would directly and dynamically align its business and IT requirements, enabling it to boost its already impressive customer service capabilities, accommodate forecast growth and bolster its business continuity capabilities. Plus, Redmayne-Bentley needed an infrastructure that could facilitate compliance with Financial Services Authority (FSA) rules for maintaining uptime during trading hours.

Unisys showed Redmayne-Bentley how the firm could realize that infrastructure objective by escaping the limitations imposed by its UNIX system and taking advantage of the operational and cost benefits afforded by open source software environments. Unisys designed a solution centered on three Unisys ES7000/one Enterprise Servers, each running SuSe Linux Enterprise Server 9 (SLES 9). Over only a single weekend, Unisys migrated Redmayne-Bentley's core applications onto the new platforms. Most importantly for its business, Redmayne-Bentley suffered no unplanned downtime during the migration.

"Like all companies in financial services we're constantly facing new challenges in business operations, security and alignment of IT with business goals," commented Michael Wheeler, finance partner at Redmayne-Bentley. "We have been able to capitalize on Unisys solutions expertise to realize measurable benefits to our business - especially maximized use of IT assets, improved customer service and a distinct competitive advantage in the marketplace."

Delivering substantially more power and capable of handling more data more quickly than its predecessor, the Unisys solution has reduced Redmayne-Bentley's overnight processing times from 13 to 1.5 hours and dramatically reduced the time it takes to report trades. It also provides added protection by eliminating a single point of failure and includes off-site disaster recovery capability. In addition there is improved security for resilience against attack to complement the upgraded business continuity capability.

"The Unisys solution for Redmayne-Bentley has delivered not only long-term advantages, but short-term benefits as well," said Richard West, who leads the Unisys team serving Redmayne-Bentley. "Unisys services delivery expertise enabled us to complete solution deployment in a single weekend, ensuring no interruption to Redmayne-Bentley's working week, when uptime during London Stock Exchange trading is both a business and a statutory requirement."