The financial industry is changing rapidly. Digital technology is redefining various service possibilities. IT architecture must be more flexible and agile to meet the needs of the new generation of financial services. To this end, Pershing and IBM organized the “CIO Peace of Mind Slumber” seminar to assist financial industry CIOs in creating innovative modern IT architectures through the application examples of IBM mainframe LinuxONE.

Pershing Chairman, Chen Qinxiang, kicked off the event pointing out that behind outstanding individual athletes, there’s always a team providing strong support. Pershing also hopes to become the best backup for enterprises and manage IT for the CIO. By providing support and backup, Pershing will help CIO’s rest more easily at night.

Accelerate the realization of Bank 4.0 with IT modern architecture

Next to the stage was Chen Xiaolun, Associate of the Hardware Systems Department of IBM in Taiwan. She started from the financial industry’s transformation from automation to digitalization, and proposed how the financial industry should build a system that can balance security, stability and Modern IT architecture for innovative business.

She said that IBM proposed a modern IT infrastructure in 2018, emphasizing the following three ideas: load-oriented (for AI, big data analysis and blockchain applications), multi-cloud and agile (all servers provide APIs to facilitate connection to public clouds ), safe and secure (based on EAL5+ security level, continue to improve security capabilities), to provide enterprises with stable, agile and intelligent IT services.

Under this chain of thought, IBM launched the LinuxONE platform that takes into account the two major characteristics of openness and innovation. More specifically, it is to run the Linux system on the IBM mainframe and support the standardized IaaS platform, which can integrate x86 business and support core applications, and provide alternatives to the x86 for the financial industry.

In addition, IBM’s newly released mainframe Z15 has functions such as full-time encryption and containerized encryption. Enterprises can use the mainframe as a springboard for external cloud access. All information can only be communicated externally after Z15 encryption, allowing enterprises to simultaneously meet performance , Integration and information security needs.

Different applications in the global financial industry have become the best choice for CIOs to reduce costs

After understanding the hardware design thinking of LinuxONE mainframe and Z15, Liao Xueguo, an actuarial consultant for the Greater China Region of the IBM Global Competitivene Office, further shared its application in the global financial industry.

Liao pointed out that a commercial bank in Vietnam originally ran x86, Windows and other platforms at the same time, which caused the internal IT structure to be very complicated, and it was not easy to support the bank’s annual growth demand of up to 30%. Upkeep and upgrading is also a burden of IT security maintenance. In order to simplify IT management operations, the Chief Information Officer decided to integrate the existing system into IBM LinuxONE, and found that after 5 years, 44% of the total cost can be saved. In addition, it also has features such as full-time encryption, easy expansion, and high reliability.

The second case is the largest auto insurance company in mainland China. It has a computer room in a southern city with 200 Java application hosts. It cut out thousands of virtual machines through two sets of Citrix and VMWare tools. Beijing built a remote backup center. After research, it was discovered that if 200 x86 servers were copied to the remote backup center intact, resulting in difficulties with the required computer room space and power supply. Retaining the existing software architecture to build remote backup costs is too high and the overall architecture flexibility is low, so the introduction of two IBM LinuxONE to build nearly 2000 virtual machines resulted in a 70% reduction in power consumption and 90% reduction in software licensing fees. Currently, the space only needs 25% of the original area.

There is also a U.S. bank that uses LinuxONE to support the bank’s key applications to achieve 100% business continuity, and the average CPU utilization rate is as high as 85-95%. It is obvious that after the platform is replaced, it can achieve better investment efficiency and higher levels of service.

Judging from these application cases, the financial industry is facing demands and challenges such as reducing overall cost of ownership, lowering software licensing fees, maintaining stable system operation, sustaining operation for 24 hours, and supporting convenient and efficient data encryption. All of these demands can be realized by importing the IBM LinuxONE platform. High stability, simplified IT maintenance, full-time encryption, and flexible expansion of the infrastructure, calmly respond to the rapid changes and service needs of business or customers. (Reported by Wu Guanyi)

The above news is from Digitimes