Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBSG) has chosen technology from Minneapolis-based NetEx to enable its corporate network to support Internet protocol-based communications.
The bank took the decision to migrate to an IP network, following its recent acquisition of NatWest Bank coupled with the future demise of the DXE hardware platform.
RBSG has used NetEx's data transport systems since 1987 for disaster recovery applications and host to host Connect:Direct communications between its two data centres in Edinburgh. NetEx/IP will now run over a new IP network between seven OS/390 enterprise servers at each of the two data centres.
Stephen Griffin, technical design authority, telecommunications design and standards, RBSG, comments: "NetEx/IP offers us significant cost savings in not having to rewrite and retest our mission-critical applications, including electronic payments applications. Because it was easy to integrate the NetEx Channel Gateways into our xSeries 230 Server (formally Netfinity) maintenance scheme, we expect a rapid ROI by replacing the high cost of DXE maintenance with the low cost maintenance of the xSeries 230 platform."
He says the bank plans to migrate all existing NetEx applications to NetEx/IP and to replace all DXE hardware by Q1 2002.
RBSG will be able to upgrade to OS/390 NetEx/IP software prior to any hardware changes. In addition, the two platforms can run simultaneously, allowing RBSG to implement the new hardware over time and avoid a "big bang" conversion.