Conducted in September 2011, at the Microsoft Platform Adoption Center in Redmond, Washington, the tests measured the high-end performance and scalability of T24 R12 on a pre-release version of Microsoft SQL Server 2012. The standardised benchmark reflected tier 1 retail banking activity volumes of 25 million accounts, 15 million customers across 2,000 branches.

As part of the testing, Temenos and Microsoft optimised connectivity between T24 and SQL Server 2012 to exploit and complement the latest features of both the application and the pre-release version of SQL Server. At peak performance, the system processed 11,500 transactions per second in online business testing and averaged more than 10,000 interest accrual and capitalizations per second during close-of-business testing - processing 25 million capitalizations and account accruals in less than 42 minutes. The testing showed a near linear scalability of 95% as the number of agents was increased.

"Banks today face significant challenges, such as higher capital requirements, which are squeezing margins tighter than ever before and driving a rapid need for higher cost efficiency. Technology investment is a prerequisite in achieving the improved productivity and associated cost benefits for successful banking today. With these results we demonstrate a powerful software combination which addresses these requirements by delivering high end scalability with a lower total cost of ownership and increased flexibility and agility to a market that has traditionally been hampered by legacy systems", commented Andre Loustau, Chief Technology Officer, Temenos.

"Banks are aware of the cost inefficiencies of legacy technology, which hamper their ability to be responsive to today's widespread, complex market changes," said Robert Hunt, senior research director at TowerGroup, a Corporate Executive Board company. "Banks will increasingly turn to core systems replacements to acquire the agility and flexibility needed to implement an architecture that maintains the high levels of operational efficiency required to perform more effectively. Leading vendors now offer Windows-based versions of their core processing systems making the Windows platform more viable. 

"These performance results, achieved on the pre-release version of SQL Server 2012, preview the power that will be available when SQL Server 2012 is released. They highlight the continued success of our strategic alliance with Temenos in delivering optimised core banking solutions on Microsoft technology to greatly increase large-scale banking efficiencies. This exciting result builds on our close collaboration to meet the needs of large banks globally and help them maximize their efficiency and TCO," concluded Joe Pagano, Worldwide Managing Director, Banking and Capital Markets, Microsoft.