The tests form part of a major programme of work undertaken by a leading European financial services organisation to assess the current and future performance of its global exceptions and reconciliations processing business.

The objective of the tests was to demonstrate that intelliTRACS version 8.1, operating on HP ProLiant servers using Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors, could exceed key target processing requirements and manage volume increases of up to 500% of current transaction processing levels. Response times of the IntelliSUITE web interface and case processing capabilities were identified as key success criteria.

By replicating the physical working environment currently in place at one of the bank's regional operations centres, the tests recorded a case volume throughput exceeding 9,000 messages per hour, excellent scalability results and a number of key application performance improvements, including:

• A 75% decrease in average transaction response times
• An increase in message throughput of over 600%
• Reduced think time from 20 - 60 seconds to 2 - 10 seconds
• Improved performance under heavy loads

Tom King, president of SunGard's STeP business unit, commented: "This benchmarking exercise represents a significant commitment from both SunGard and our alliance partners, so we are pleased with its successful conclusion. The application and infrastructure synergies and scalability results we have seen in testing demonstrate that, together, SunGard, HP and Intel can deliver a global transaction processing solution capable of meeting some of the highest demands of today's banking environments."

He continued: "SunGard's developers have worked closely with Intel's software engineers at Intel's Wall Street Lab to optimize the intelliTRACS solution. Now the outstanding performance, reliability and total cost of ownership (TCO) of Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors can provide our customers with a competitive advantage by significantly improving the number of resolved exceptions that they can process."

Ron Eller, vice president and general manager of enterprise solutions alliances, HP, also commented: "The outstanding results of this benchmark speak to the strength of our joint work with SunGard, and provide a compelling value proposition to the industry and our mutual customers as we help them achieve better business outcomes."