Citi Tokyo Faces Life After DECstations; Plans To Shift Desktop From Unix To NT

Citibank in Tokyo is in the early stages of rethinking its dealing room environment. The bank's 100-position dealing room has featured Ultrix/Unix-based Digital Equipment Corp. DECstations on the desktop linked by Teknekron Software Systems' Teknekron Information Bus for over three years. Thus far, the bank plans to replace its desktop DECstations with processors running Microsoft Corp.'s Windows NT. The rest of the bank's strategy has yet to be hammered out.

The need to find a new hardware platform is the primary impetus to the bank's rethink: DEC early last year put out the word that it would discontinue its DECstations in favour of its Alpha boxes. However, Citi will also take the opportunity to re-examine its options on the software side, including data delivery systems, a bank official says.

And while Teknekron remains well-positioned to continue to provide the data distribution software linking those devices, Citi sources say the bank will take a look at other digital data distribution platforms currently available.

In its shift to Windows NT and away from Unix--at least for the desktop--Citi joins a growing number of banks and securities firms in Japan (including Credit Lyonnais, see related story; Jardine Fleming, D&IS, 14 August; Merrill Lynch, D&IS, 31 July and Hatori Marshall, D&IS, 5 June).

Early on, cost concerns led many firms to seek PC, rather than Unix workstation-based systems. Later, the fact that Japanese Windows are even more prone to memory resource problems than the English-language version gave Japanese users an added push towards Windows NT. For Citi, the official says, Windows 95 is not an option, if for no other reason than that it doesn't meet the bank's internal standards for data security.

The ability to run market data and applications in the same environment as office automation applications under NT is a key attraction for the bank, an official there says. To accommodate dealers' requirements, Citi's Tokyo branch has also supplied most dealers with a PC to supplement their DECstation 5000s. Ideally, the bank's dealers would access all the information and applications they require via a single NT-based display device and a single keyboard.

On the server side, the bank is less wed to any one operating system, as long as the server communication software is capable of delivering data to NT clients via reliable broadcast or multicasting, a Citi official says.

Cost will clearly be an issue in Citi's dealing room plans, Citi officials say. Another concern that one bank official cites is that the NT-based data delivery platform it uses be truly 32-bit and truly client/server.

Most of the Windows NT-based products for workstation display software now available consist of vendors' ports of their 16-bit Windows 3.1- and Windows for Workgroup-based applications, which means they do not take full advantage of NT's capabilities. (One firm in Japan that's gone live with Windows NT on dealers' desks-- Credit Lyonnais--cites difficulties running applications originally designed for Windows as the sole problem it encountered with the NT implementation; see related story.)

Teknekron is in the process of developing an NT version of its core TIB processes. It's likely that product could be ready for launch by the time Citi's thought process begins to spark action. The release of the NT TIB is due in May 1996, a Teknekron spokesperson says.

However Teknekron fares in Tokyo, CSK Micrognosis, with its Invision platform, Dow Jones Telerate and Reuters with Triarch all have their own strongholds in other Citi centres. Citicorp's North American technologists have deployed Triarch for use in the firm's key New York office, as well as in its Toronto room (Trading Systems Technology, Feb. 20). Before Triarch's invasion, Micrognosis had also claimed Citi New York as a key reference account--but can still point to continental Europe, where the bank has installed Invision across multiple sites.

Citi remains one of the few major dealing organisations that has not sought to implement a standard data delivery system globally. The bank has a common wide area network--known as CGIN--and had earlier rallied behind DEC as a hardware standard, although Sun Microsystems Inc. servers have cropped up in a number of sites. But diversity of application and data distribution software has persisted at the bank.

Although Citi's Tokyo office is part of the bank's JENA group, comprising its Japan, Europe and North American trading operations, it has traditionally been given substantial leeway to make its own system choices. One Citi source says the bank does have plans to globalise trading support across the group, but it has yet to do so.

Citi's Tokyo branch has also supplied most dealers with a PC to supplement the DECstation.

Citi's other Asian Pacific offices enjoy even greater autonomy when it comes to information technology choices, operating as it does under separate business and IT management. Sydney set the pace in 1991 when it yanked the Dogfox system it had installed under New York's direction, in favour of an early version of Telerate digital data delivery system, then marketed as Advanced Workstation System (TST, Oct. 7, 1991). Citibank in Sydney installed DECstation on senior dealers' desks, but gave others access to information and analytics via DEC VT100 virtual terminals. The bank subsequently installed later versions of Telerate's trading room software through a number of other sites in Asia as well.

When Tokyo went live with its Teknekron installation in 1992, it became the first Citi dealing room to go fully digital with Unix workstations on the desktop (Trading Systems Technology, March 9, 1992). Citi was also among the first foreign banks in Japan to make a local decision to deploy Teknekron; previously most of the major Teknekron implementations in Japan were the result of global decisions made overseas. Citi purchased its TIB licenses from Nippon Steel, about six months after the manufacturer signed on as a Teknekron reseller in Japan.