Financial institutions are increasingly adopting Red Hat Enterprise Linux for core systems because Linux-based systems offer added flexibility and high performance while costing less to install and run. With Linux-based technology, organisations can change and adapt their systems without being tied to a single type of hardware or application provider. The addition of Red Hat Enterprise Linux as a SWIFT-supported platform responds to strong interest from enterprises and demonstrates SWIFT's commitment to helping the financial community reduce cost and increase efficiency.

SWIFT is collaborating with Red Hat, Inc., the world's leading provider of open source solutions, to deliver SWIFT applications on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating platform. SWIFT's new Linux offering will provide the same security, reliability and performance as its existing versions for AIX, Solaris and Microsoft-based products.

Prior to launching SWIFT systems on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SWIFT conducted pilot (beta) tests with several SWIFT customers, including Clearstream. Willy Schockert, Director UNIX and ICSD Infrastructure, Clearstream, comments: "We welcome the SWIFT initiative to support Red Hat Enterprise Linux, since it aligns with our Linux server strategy. Our pilot tests of SWIFT's Linux-based applications demonstrated that the environment is very stable, with performance levels that met or exceeded our existing UNIX-based systems. The support from SWIFT was excellent and demonstrated their expertise with this new platform. We are now looking forward to moving SWIFT onto Linux in the live environment."

Victor Abbeloos, Head of Interfaces and Integration at SWIFT, said: "Many customers have told us that Linux deployment is part of their overall IT strategy. By offering Red Hat Enterprise Linux support in addition to our existing software platforms, we're giving customers the freedom to choose the right IT solution for their business. We're very pleased to collaborate with Red Hat so that our customers can continue to enjoy security, high performance and peace of mind."

"Red Hat Enterprise Linux is both extremely flexible and highly secure - a combination that is critical for financial organizations that are routinely managing and processing large amounts of data," said Jim Totton, vice president, Platform Business Unit. "Adding Red Hat Enterprise Linux support to its industry-leading Alliance Access solution means that SWIFT's customers will be able to easily and successfully process secure data transactions through our powerful open source platform."

As SWIFT's leading 'on-premises' messaging interface, Alliance Access is geared to customers with medium to large volumes of message traffic, enabling thousands of financial institutions worldwide to process millions of highly secure transactions each day.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux support is already available for SWIFT's Advanced Messaging Hub (AMH), which enables the largest global financial institutions to manage very high message volumes. SWIFT is also launching Red Hat Enterprise Linux support for its Alliance Gateway, Alliance Web Platform and SWIFTNet Link products.