Fiserv (NASDAQ: FISV), the leading global provider of financial services technology solutions, announced today the results of a benchmark test to 80 million accounts for the Signature bank platform, which is marketed globally.
The results show the platform's ability to deliver operational efficiency and scalability with lower overall cost of ownership as a result of processing more accounts with less hardware and software in a short timeframe.
Conducted by Fiserv and IBM at the IBM Rochester, Minn. Benchmark Center in the U.S., test results show that Signature is able to quickly process a complex mix of up to 80 million savings, DDA/current accounts, time accounts, and fixed and variable rate loan accounts using the IBM Power 570 running in the IBM i operating environment. The test was designed to simulate real-world, full end-of-business day, end-of-quarter processes including the simultaneous generation of fees, accruals and payments.
"Shorter processing times and less system downtime on a more efficient platform like Power System running the IBM i 6.1, lowers expenses for financial institutions by reducing capital and overall operating costs when compared to other solutions," said John Macaluso, senior vice president, technology strategy, Bank Solutions, Fiserv. "Signature can be tailored to support a wide variety of business models. Fiserv clients have used this environment to support from 50,000 to over 11,000,000 accounts on a single system. These benchmark results demonstrate how, with a high degree of flexibility, Signature can provide immediate business benefits to large financial institutions."
"In terms of processing power and cost, Power Systems running IBM i are among the most efficient, scalable and reliable on the market," said Ian Jarman, manager of Power Systems software, IBM. "Fiserv and IBM are steadfast partners, and we share a commitment to keep pace with changing technologies such as open application design, virtualization and clustering to enable banks to remain competitive."
Macaluso added, "Members of our organization sit on the IBM I ISV Advisory Council, so we are able to have a free flow of information between our financial seervices technology experts and IBM's hardware and software strategists. Fiserv also uses this opportunity to learn about upcoming launches from IBM, such as the recently announced Power7 processors, which helps continue planning and testing future capabilities."
Signature from Fiserv is a complete, real-time, service-oriented architecture (SOA)-based solution that reinforces the Fiserv core competency in processing services. During the test, Signature processed ten million accounts in 28 minutes and 80 million accounts in two hours and 41 minutes using an IBM Power 570 with 4 or 12 POWER6 processor cores respectively running the IBM i 6.1 operating environment. The IBM Power System family can scale to as large as 64 processor cores. Interest payments, fee charges and accruals were processed simultaneously at a rate of 780,000 DDA/Savings and 628,000 time deposit accounts per minute. The database used for the benchmark was based on a real-world bank database modified to reflect the mix of savings, current account and loan accounts.
In earlier tests, Signature demonstrated rapid response and high throughput for real-time online transaction processing. During those tests, Signature processed a typical mix of Internet transactions across eight million accounts averaging nearly 1,200 transactions per second with an average response time of .037 seconds. In addition, Signature supported a sustained peak of 1,475 transactions per second with a minimal increase in response time, clearly demonstrating Signature's capacity to support a bank's online and Internet transactions.