Co-operative Bank modernises core IT infrastructure with Unisys

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We get the best of both worlds by having the performance and security we have always valued.Annette Natta, Co-operative Bank

Co-operative Bank has transformed its IT infrastructure using Unisys ClearPath Forward systems.

“We invested in refreshing and modernising our underlying IT infrastructure to create an environment that supports our bi-modal IT delivery needsnow and into the future,” says Annette Natta, general manager of information services at The Co-operative Bank, in a statement.

The modernised environment enables the bank to deliver core banking services to its customers, while providing flexible and high performance spare capacity to support the bank in offering new products and services.

“We get the best of both worlds by having the performance and security we have always valued, combined with the flexibility the Forward fabric offers to help us deliver new and enhanced services to our customers,” says Natta.

Rising to the digital challenge? Think bimodal

The software-based fabric architecture provides a flexible environment, across a range of operating systems, to enable delivery of core banking matched with capacity to deliver new products and digital services to customer.

Unisys ClearPath Forward infrastructure provides enhanced security for crucial client and business information, as well as greater scalability to support the addition of new services. In addition, Unisys ClearPath ePortal, a highly automated application modernisation system, is a critical component supporting the bank’s SOA environment in delivering in-branch, mobile and online banking services.

The bank replaced the Unisys ClearPath Libra 690 and ES7000 servers with ClearPath Forward 4390 fabrics to deliver a highly available infrastructure running MCP, Windows and VMware.

As a result, the bank has experienced increased throughput to feed mobile and online banking, significantly reduced batch times and data transfer speeds between different operating systems to near 50 Gbps.

The ClearPath Forward systems feature a software-based fabric computing architecture that runs on Intel Xeon processors, says Unisys, in a statement.

Today’s ‘always on’ banking environment requires high speed, resilient and secure computing infrastructure to run the banking applications and services to customersTony Windever, Unisys

The fabric links all computing resources and components via a high-speed interconnect, with Unisys secure partitioning (s?Par) software managing all application workloads. Each partition has dedicated resources for each workload, eliminating resource contention.

The systems also support VMware or Docker for standard virtualisation that complements secure partitioning. Applications running in all environments on a given system can inter-operate seamlessly over the fabric.

This flexibility across different operating environments gives the bank greater freedom in choosing applications, says Unisys.

“Today’s‘always on’ banking environmentrequires high speed, resilient and secure computing infrastructure to run the banking applications and services to customers,” says Tony Windever, Unisys vice president and general manager, enterprise solutions, Asia Pacific.

“We are excited to be able to continue to bring that experience and innovation to the Co-operative Bank.”

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