Lehman Brothers has been lauded by Sun for the creation of a Solaris Live Upgrade framework that utilises alternative storage volume management software to minimise risk in application upgrades.
The custom functionality was designed in-house by the bank's IT staff and allows the bank to make on-the-fly upgrades of third-party software while the entire system is still in full production.
Bridget O'Connor, managing director and chief technology officer at Lehman Brothers, says the challenge is that system upgrades are critical to stability, but often require extended maintenance windows and are risky to implement.
"The technology developed by Lehman Brothers enables such critical upgrades to be performed safely with minimal interruption to services, especially when paired with Solaris," says O'Connor.
Sun says it plans to release this functionality within the year. The vendor has also awarded Lehman Brothers an undisclosed grant of products and has offered the investment bank a seat on its Solaris Technical Advisory Board.