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| Outsourcing offers clear benefits in terms of convenience, but companies
that want to increase agility
and lower the cost of conducting
their core business might do well to
consider taking control of their
own IT environment.
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| PULSE EFT Association, the largest
member-owned electronic funds
transfer (EFT) network in the
United States, recently did just that.
The PULSE switch had been operated
by JPMorgan Chase and its
predecessors for 17 years on HP
NonStop servers, using application
software from eFunds Corporation.
PULSE was happy with the service
that JPMorgan Chase provided. But
when the companies’ contractual
agreement came to an end, PULSE
took the opportunity to evaluate
other options, ultimately choosing to
bring the entire switching, settlement,
and billing infrastructure in-house.
An evolved NonStop environment
continues to handle the business-critical
ATM/POS switching load.
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| Taking control of its own IT
environment has made PULSE
more adaptive, according to Scott
Haney, chief information officer
and senior vice president of
Operations. “We are a much more
nimble organization now,” he said.
“If we decide to change course or
roll out a new product, we can do
it quickly and easily—and in our
business, we need to be able to
move quickly. Increased agility was
a key factor in our decision to bring
ATM/POS processing in-house.”
The ability to lower costs was
another key factor. “Obviously,
when you’re paying somebody to
do the processing for you, they’re
making some profit from it,” Haney
continued. “There’s always the
opportunity to save costs by doing it
yourself, if you know how to do it
right—and we had a high confidence
level that we did. In addition,
moving to a newer platform will
result in lower maintenance costs.
The excellent manageability of the
NonStop platform contributes to
low total cost of ownership. A single
full-time-equivalent employee manages
our entire NonStop system base,
and I think that speaks for itself.”
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At JPMorgan Chase, the PULSE switch
ran on an older-model NonStop
system; however, with the establishment
of in-house switching facilities,
PULSE chose to evolve to the
latest NonStop S86000 technology.
The results are impressive. “Our
utilization levels have gone down
dramatically with the NonStop
S86000 servers,” stated Haney.
“On average, we’re utilizing less
than 20 percent of our CPU capacity
on a daily basis. This gives us lots
of headroom.”
When establishing the in-house
platform, PULSE developed two
identical switching and settlement
platforms in different locations.
Both online platforms operate
simultaneously, processing and
unloading transactions. Switching is
handled by the NonStop servers;
day-to-day settlement is performed
on the IBM platform. In the event
of an interruption, PULSE would
immediately transfer all transaction
and settlement processing and settlement
report distribution to the
unaffected location.
Both data centers run 24 hours a
day, 7 days a week, and include
NonStop S86000 servers for production
and a NonStop S7600 server for
development, plus HP Atalla network
security processors. The two “hot”
sites communicate via HP Expand
software, with primary production
traffic going to both locations
simultaneously. An AT&T asynchronous
transfer mode backbone connects
the two facilities; GoldenGate
replication software writes the
eFunds application records from
one platform to the other, in both
directions. If one site were to go
down, the other would immediately
pick up 100 percent of the processing
load. Both platforms are sized to
handle more than 100 percent of
the entire network load at any
given moment.
HP OpenView is an important
part of the overall solution. “We use
OpenView Service Desk as our event
and problem management tool,”
explained Haney. “When people in
our network operations or command
center open a trouble ticket, an
incident, or a request of any kind,
they use OpenView Service Desk to
manage those tickets. This gives the
entire operations group immediate
visibility to tickets that are open,
pending, or closed. In turn, it
makes our customer relationship
managers and network operations
people much more knowledgeable
about what’s going on in a given
account at any point in time.”
Although OpenView software was
initially installed to manage PULSE’s
Frame Relay network, it was rapidly
extended to include the NonStop
system environment. “We very
quickly realized the utility of the
integrated toolset and propagated it
across our entire operations enterprise,”
stated Haney. “In fact, we’re
continuing to do this as we speak.
It’s virtually a never-ending project,
as we continue to utilize the enterprise
management toolset more
and more.” Other HP products that
figure prominently in PULSE’s operations
include desktop computers
and HP ProLiant servers. |
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Every day, PULSE switches and
settles ATM/POS transactions for
more than 4,600 member financial
institutions across the United States.
The network connects 90 million
cardholders with 250,000 ATMs and
3.3 million POS terminals nationwide.
In 2003, PULSE switched and
settled approximately 1.3 billion
transactions through its NonStop
system–based switch.
With a projected annual growth
rate of 20 percent, this transaction
volume reflects a solid upward
trend and a growing challenge.
“PULSE is dedicated to maintaining
the highest quality of service for our
member institutions, retailers, and
cardholders,” noted Haney. “In our
industry, that means a goal of 24 x 7
uptime in the switching environment,
plus the ability to get all transactions
settled properly. The NonStop server
running eFunds CONNEX Advantage
software is the best solution to satisfy
our rigorous switching requirements.”
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Continuous availability is probably
the single most important feature
of the NonStop system at PULSE;
however, the platform’s impressive
mixed workload capabilities rank a
close second. Batch processing is
not handled on the NonStop system—that’s the purview of the company’s
back-office IBM mainframe,
with which the NonStop server
interoperates—but online queries
are a critical part of PULSE’s daily
business. “The query capability is
something we really take advantage
of,” noted Haney. “The ability to utilize
those eFunds databases to query
transactions and processor profile
information, with absolutely no
degradation to the online transaction
processing performance, is essential.
That‘s why we chose the NonStop
server as our core transaction
switching platform.” |
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PULSE is currently in the process
of adding ancillary services to the
NonStop server environment, such
as a standalone eFunds application
for authorization processing. “Having
the NonStop systems in our own
facilities has given us greater insight
into the platform’s inherent power,”
commented Haney. “We now have a
better appreciation of the breadth of
its capabilities, and we’ll be looking
for more opportunities to take
advantage of them.”
HP Services played a major role
in the PULSE migration, with a
NonStop system technical lead
on-site for nine solid months, and
secondary support available as
needed. “We were very happy with
the service HP provided,” noted
Haney. “Our relationship with HP
continues to be very good, with
excellent service on everything from
desktops and servers all the way up
to our NonStop systems.”
A number of partners also contributed
to the success of the PULSE
project. In order to communicate
with all of its endpoint processors,
PULSE engaged Talisen Technologies
to design, develop, and implement a
Frame Relay solution in collaboration
with AT&T. Integrated Research
provided the PROGNOSIS monitoring
tool, Sterling Commerce provided
file transfer software, and Insession
provided a communications software
agent. The assistance of JPMorgan
Chase, of course, was invaluable in
making the transition. “We couldn’t have
done it without them,” noted Haney.
For PULSE, the overriding benefit
of the NonStop solution revolves
around uptime. “Because of its ability
to manage our application with no
degradation to online service, we rely
on the NonStop platform to handle
our core business,” concluded Haney.
“That’s how our business lives and
breathes. Without the NonStop platform
performing at this level, we
would not be able to do the business
that we do.”
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