Westpac Nears Completion Of Projects: OS/2-To-NT & Triarch Global Rollout

SYDNEY--Westpac Bank has nearly completed migrating its trading applications at the server level from the IBM OS/2 environment to Microsoft's Windows NT. At the same time, the bank is close to finishing its global rollout of the Reuters Triarch digital data distribution system.

The bank began migrating its internally developed IBM OS/2-based, real-time global trading applications to the Microsoft Windows NT environment last year (Dealing & Investment Systems, May 19, 1997).

Along with the application migration, the bank began a shift of its market data delivery infrastructure to Triarch and Reuters' Kobra front-end display software, moving away from a customized, Midas-Kapiti International (MKI) system, called DR-one, used in tandem with the OS/2 Presentation Manager front-end.

David Backley, Westpac's head of technology for the institutional banking group, says the Triarch rollout is being done in phases and the first phase began some four months ago. The rollout is nearly complete now and will be finished before the end of the year, he adds.

Westpac began using DR-one a decade ago when the system went live at the bank's Brisbane and Melbourne sites (Trading Systems Technology, December 5, 1988). The bank has relied on OS/2-based client/server front-, middle- and back-office trading systems and LANs since 1990.

In the systems and applications migration project process, the bank had to identify which applications should be retained and which should be replaced. Backley declines to discuss the results of this analysis. He does say that all business functions have been retained.

The migration is part of a two-year renovation of the bank's global trading system, internally called the information delivery system (IDS).

The project is complex partly because the OS/2 trading systems enable counterparties to trade with Westpac as a single entity, regardless of the Westpac branch with which the actual trading is being done. An example of this is a real-time application that captures foreign exchange transactions generated from Westpac's London, New York, Melbourne, Sydney and Tokyo trading centres. The FX settlement application subsequently passes the transactions to a centralized back-office platform in Sydney for processing.

Other applications affected by this structure include: the deal capture and position keeping system; the Exotica derivatives trading system; and the WIRO risk management system. When the project began, the bank hoped to migrate these applications to NT. If those migrations were not practical, third-party replacements would be installed.

Early last year, Westpac was constructing a multi-phased migration plan to rank the trading and network systems components according to ascending levels of interdependency. The bank's local and global networked trading and market data systems made migrating platform components in isolation an impractical exercise.

"We're now in the process of finishing the migration at [the] server end," says Backley. The bank has consolidated its file servers where possible, resulting in the use of clustered, high-end enterprise servers.

Westpac uses a mix of NT-based application servers and higher-end Unix-based servers, with the NT boxes being more prevalent, says Backley. The Triarch system runs against Sun Microsystems' Solaris-based servers.

While most of the bank's applications run against NT servers, the bank has no intention of doing away with Unix. "We're not trying to squeeze multiple applications onto NT at this point in time," he says.

For the NT servers, the bank uses both IBM/Intel and Compaq Computer/Digital Alpha hardware. The bank's high-end, NT-based file servers are based upon the Digital Alpha technology, "to take advantage of the 64-bit nature of NT 5 and competitive pricing from Digital", says Backley.

The bank's decision to use the Alpha hardware was made before Compaq's announcement that it had acquired Digital. "We'll see what happens with Compaq's ownership [of Digital,]" he says.

One factor in the server hardware selection was Intel's delays in the release of its 64-bit Merced chip, co-developed with Hewlett-Packard. "We haven't excluded the Intel processor, but we have included the Alpha where appropriate," he says.

On the desktop, the bank has tried to standardize as much as possible.

The vision of a standard desktop configuration is what Backley calls the "Holy Grail". He says the bank comes pretty close, adding that there are two desktop variations, with high-end IBM PCs in use in the trading rooms.

Other than some offshore trading room desktops that remain to be migrated, most of Westpac's global desktops (95 per cent) have been migrated from OS/2 to NT, says Backley.

When asked about other systems initiatives, Backley says the bank has been conducting some pilot tests, but he declines to elaborate. Industry sources say Westpac has been evaluating Tibco's TIB/Rendezvous. Backley declined to comment.

Backley adds that current projects include getting ready for the start of the European Monetary Union (EMU) and Year 2000 compliance.