IBM and Financial Network Services (FNS), a subsidiary of Tata Consultancy Services, announced the world’s largest core banking benchmark result delivering a record 9,445 business transactions per second (tps) in real-time based on more than 380 million accounts with three billion transaction histories.

IBM and FNS worked with Bank of China, one of Asia’s largest and most innovative banks, on the record-breaking scalability benchmark powered by an IBM System z9 Parallel Sysplex™ mainframe running DB2 database software and FNS’s BANCS core banking application software. The benchmark, independently audited by InfoSizing, tops FNS’s previous online transaction processing (OLTP) record and all other mainframe OLTP benchmarks in IBM’s history.

FNS BANCS application on the IBM mainframe redefines transaction processing performance in the banking industry. Banks and financial services companies will be able to process key transactions faster, lower total cost of ownership and more easily manage growing transaction volumes with limited operational risk.

Tony Ward, CEO, Financial Network Services, states “FNS and IBM have delivered an outstanding core banking benchmark result which highlights FNS’s ability to deliver a core banking platform that will attain high levels of availability, scalability and robustness for the largest banks in the world. FNS has been developing core banking solutions for over two decades and has invested heavily in core banking technology to help our clients boost their bottom line and drive more value than from legacy systems.”

The goal of the benchmark was to execute a range of tests that covered OLTP scalability, End-of-Day batch processing, and End-of-Month batch processing with a target of handling unprecedented transaction volumes. The transaction and account mix was based on real customer projected workload characteristics in their production environment including: Cash Deposit, Credit Transaction, Cash Withdrawal, Debit Transaction, Loan Account Inquiry, Deposit Account Inquiry, Loan Repayment Cash and Loan Repayment Credit Transaction.

“IBM mainframes scale to meet the most extreme transaction processing demands in the banking industry today,” said Ian Hurst, IBM’s Global Financial Sector General Manager. “The combination of FNS’s BANCS application software and IBM’s System z9 mainframe technology helps our clients lower their transaction processing response times and reduce transaction costs through world class performance, reliability and availability.”

The benchmark was performed at IBM’s System z Customer Benchmark Center in Poughkeepsie, New York, from June to August 2006. The solution was based on FNS’s BANCS core banking software package running on two IBM System z9 Enterprise Class Model 2094 (S54-754) machines and four DS8300 model 2107-922 storage subsystems. IBM System z9 was allocated with over 30,000 MIPS and 52 TB of DASD running on z/OS with DB2 relational database software and a CICS/TS Environment. The FNS BANCS solution only utilized 85 percent capacity of MIPS and 35 percent of DASD for application data processing, revealing massive scalability and optimum system performance.

Source: InfoSizing FNS BANCS Scalability on IBM System z – Report Date: September 20, 2006