Today's announcement arrives after FIS Profile has been optimized and benchmarked in excess of 100 million accounts.

Deployed in hundreds of financial institutions throughout 25 countries, FIS Profile helps banks dramatically reduce their operating costs. With FIS Profile now optimized for z/OS, customers can expect to see dramatic efficiency gains when adopting Profile as their core banking solution.

The FIS Profile core banking system provides exceptional scalability, reliability and business continuity. Its integrated architecture contains all of a bank's customer data and deposit and loan accounts within a single logical system of record. An extensive inventory of configurable components is shared across all product lines to support loan and deposit products. This unique application design ensures operating efficiency while dramatically accelerating the time to market of new products and services.

Often referred as one of the world's most sophisticated business servers, the IBM System z delivers mixed workload integration, high-transaction processing, and data serving, delivering enriched functions for the on-demand operating environment.

Existing FIS Profile customers range from organizations with direct bank subsidiaries to top-tier global banks. Now, the ability to deploy FIS Profile across a variety of platforms makes it the premier choice for organizations committed to migrating to a real-time platform or evolving their multichannel infrastructure.

"The addition of FIS Profile gives IBM clients another reason to continue to run their most sophisticated transactions on System z," said Bob Hoey, general manager, IBM Major Markets. "Beyond offering our customers stronger compatibility with best-of-breed providers like FIS, IBM consistently looks for ways to help clients lower their costs, reduce complexity and operate more efficiently."

"This solution will help continue the significant growth of System z in developing markets," said Dan O'Connell, vice president of Mainframe Platform for STG Growth Markets Unit at IBM. "For the first quarter of 2009, System z business increased by 37 percent in the growth markets due to market recognition of the IBM mainframe's reliability, availability and, in particular, its ability to scale and accommodate rapid growth. The addition of FIS Profile can make System z even more compelling for our financial services customers."

"The reliability, scalability and efficiency of FIS Profile have made it an ideal solution for large financial institutions across the globe," said Frank Sanchez, president, FIS strategic solutions. "Offering this application on the IBM mainframe platform creates a compelling solution for institutions that are consolidating platforms and operations or upgrading to a real-time infrastructure. The combination of best-in-class solutions and services from the industry leading vendors in the top-tier provides a stable, enabling framework for operational and technical transformation."