http://www.microsoft.com/TechNet/analpln/cs/bankpr2.htm (PC Press Internet CD, 03/1996)
| Updated: March 14,1996 |  Go To TechNet Home Page |
Lyle Anderson, Vice President, Bankers Trust Company
Industry: Financial
Business Solution: Bankwide computing infrastructure; control application for managing large volumes of spreadsheets
Architecture: Spreadsheet-based derivatives transactions dynamically linked to an SQL database
Products and Services Used: Microsoft Excel , Microsoft Windows NT Workstation, Microsoft Windows NT Server , Microsoft SQL Server , Microsoft Select License Pak
Benefits: Enhances user productivity; reduces support costs; enhances development efforts; improves response times
More than 10,000 workstations worldwide. Spreadsheets that routinely exceed 16 MB. Product cycles that are measured in days. A need for absolute security. And a complex computer network that included the MS-DOSr, Microsoftr WindowsTM, and UNIXr operating systems. With this kind of business environment, it's no wonder Bankers Trust Company found itself bumping up against the ceiling of its computing capabilities.
"The cost of computing at the desktop and server was getting pretty high," explains Lyle Anderson, head of Technology Strategic Planning (TSP) for the worldwide merchant bank. TSP is responsible for computer architecture planning, strategy, and engineering for the bank. It supports application groups distributed throughout Bankers Trust and provides the solutions the groups use to implement systems. "Both the type of business we're in and the type of financial products we develop are very workstation-oriented. What we needed was the computing capacity to really provide a high-end workstation platform for our traders, and a secure platform that we could use for deploying applications." Anderson and his group also envisioned turning the need for a new computing platform into an opportunity to reduce administrative requirements and support costs.
Believing it must update its computer system in order to stay competitive in a fast-moving business environment, Bankers Trust began to look for a new technological foundation.
Setting Priorities for a Solution
According to Anderson, Bankers Trust is really two banks in one. "On the one hand, we're a very innovative financial products company, providing complex financial transactions for our corporate customers," he explains. "At the same time, we're a full-service commercial bank, offering services such as pension management and corporate loans." Entirely a merchant bank, Bankers Trust has no retail component. Anderson says the bank is unique among financial institutions because it is one of the few organizations that is not a UNIX shop. The bank's 10,000 workstations have historically run a mixture of MS-DOS and Windows, with Novellr NetWarer predominant at the file-server level. The bank also had a variety of other servers for Microsoft SQL ServerTM, and some OS/2r- and UNIX-based machines. This assortment of computing platforms was hindering the bank's ability to respond quickly to client needs and market opportunities. "Our product cycles are often measured in days or weeks," says Anderson. "We have to move very quickly to get new products out in the market, beat the competition, and then maybe turn those from one-off products into something that's repeatable." In addition to its need to deal with a dynamic, constantly changing business environment, the bank had to support users with unusually large computing requirements.
The more TSP analyzed the bank's needs, the more it kept coming back to one computing solution on which the bank could build its future. The solution-the Microsoft Windows NT operating system. "We were already a big user of Windows," says Anderson. "And we used Windows-based applications such as Microsoft Excel-it's our trading floor standard. So the idea of moving to Windows NT was very logical. It allows us to carry forward what we've already built by giving us more capacity, more computing power, and more security."
Phasing in a New Computer Foundation
Anderson says Bankers Trust sees Windows NTTM Workstation as the core of the bank's desktop strategy. The bank is rolling out this strategy in stages throughout its worldwide offices and expects to have Windows NT Workstation installed and running on many of its 10,000 desktop computers within a year. There are plans for 50 to 100 servers to run Windows NTTM Server, which will be used for Microsoft SQL Server and file and print services. Initial migration to Windows NT Server and Microsoft SQL Server has taken only a day or two per application. According to Anderson, "It's been relatively straightforward, which has been a nice added benefit. It's been transparent to our business."
The first Windows NT-based application the bank has completed is its Emerging Products Application (EPA), a system that integrates its spreadsheet-based derivatives products and a relational database. EPA takes advantage of the capabilities of Windows NT Server and Microsoft SQL Server. Spreadsheets created with Microsoft Excel and used to construct derivative securities are stored on a file server running Windows NT Server. The spreadsheets are equipped with dynamically linked fields that, when modified, are automatically transferred to a Microsoft SQL Server database. The two back-end systems communicate with each other using ODBC (Open Database Connectivity). Using standard query tools, bank professionals can generate complex summary reports describing the transactions. Manually consolidating figures from hundreds of disparate spreadsheets is no longer necessary. Spreadsheet data, "published" daily from Microsoft SQL Server, is available for reporting at any time. Before EPA, audit reports could be compiled on only a monthly basis. Along with enhanced auditing and archiving capabilities, EPA also provides economies of scale through the reduction of bookkeeping labor.
Steven Hargreaves, who helped develop EPA, discusses why Windows NT and Microsoft SQL Server were chosen for the back end, "Some of the spreadsheets describe transactions, each of which may be worth several million dollars. In many ways, the spreadsheets are the assets of the bank. Reliability and the capability of processing them rapidly and robustly is absolutely critical to the bank. We need a powerful reliable system to make sure we can handle those spreadsheets securely."
The Windows NT Difference
While Windows NT is still being implemented at Bankers Trust, Anderson says the bank is already seeing benefits. "Windows NT gives us the power to manage very, very large spreadsheets-well beyond 16 MB in some cases. Now we have the horsepower to expand what individual end users can do. We've taken the shackles off and that has improved productivity." Anderson also points out that, for users, the move to Windows NT Workstation was transparent, "They just get more of everything."
The move benefits developers, too. "We have about 1000 developers in the bank, and they need a platform they can rely on to build applications on, both at desktop and server level. One of the attractions of Windows NT is that APIs and computing models are the same for both client and server. It's easy to port and scale applications. Given our type of business and how quickly it changes, we need that kind of flexibility. Also the reliability has been rock solid. With Windows NT version 3.5 the performance is really there."
As Bankers Trust continues to roll out Windows NT, Anderson sees increasing cost savings. "With Windows NT and some of the companion products such as Microsoft Systems Management Server we plan to put into place, we should be able to reduce substantially the unit cost of supporting each PC in the bank over the next couple of years."
Microsoft and MS-DOS are registered trademarks and Windows and Windows NT are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. VAX and VMS are trademarks of Digital Equipment Corporation. OS/2 is a registered trademark of International Business Machines. NetWare and Novell are registered trademarks of Novell , Inc. UNIX is a registered trademark of UNIX Systems Laboratories.
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