German private investment bank Sal. Oppenheim is to use Grid technology from Platform Computing to speed up pricing and risk calculation times at its equity derivatives trading division.
The bank will use the vendor's Platform Symphony software to Grid-enable applications currently used for calculations over a virtualised computing environment. The technology harnesses spare computing capacity for running number-crunching applications.
This will speed up the production of complex scenario-based models used for daily pricing and risk calculations at the bank, which can currently take from a few minutes to hours.
Peter Schwendner, head of quantitative research, Sal. Oppenheim, says the Grid technology will enable the bank to handle the large quantities of data involved in pricing and risk calculation more effectively.
"Returning calculations with delays of even just seconds can result in the difference between profit and loss," says Schwendner.
The implementation is is expected to be completed in March 2005. Platform will also provide the bank with consulting services and on-going support for distributed computing infrastructure.
Commenting on Sal. Oppenheim move to Grid technology, Dominique Comte, MD, Europe, Platform Computing, says financial institutions now have the ability to deploy software that will turbo charge complex, compute- and time-intensive applications across a virtualised infrastructure whilst using existing IT architectures.
Platform won a similar contract with Landesbank Baden-Wurttemberg (LBBW) last year. Competitor firm DataSynapse partnered with local IT consultancy PCIB in an effort to tap the German banking market in July 2003.