The financial services industry is fast moving and highly competitive. The market can change in an instant. Being aware of sudden movements in the market, and having the ability to react accordingly, are two of the biggest challenges facing financial organizations today. For this major multinational financial services organization dealing with corporate, private and retail investments and holding many thousands of portfolios, ensuring it has access to real-time data and a scalable, flexible and reliable IT infrastructure are paramount.

CHALLENGE Looking for compute power and scalability

Over the last ten years, this financial services institution developed a comprehensive suite of applications tailored specifically to its needs. Complex algorithms and modeling software developed in-house are critical in managing customer deals from initial pricing to managing risk. For these processes to work efficiently, having access to real-time data and keeping that information updated at all times is essential. But, prior to deploying Pivotal GemFire, this became a real challenge for the bank. A batch-oriented approach to calculating risk at specific times of the day for all portfolios was no longer enough to stay at the forefront of this fast-paced industry.

At the same time, while the bank had access to some of the most innovative and sophisticated financial technology products on the market, the underlying IT infrastructure created many problems. Relational databases were bottlenecks that hindered the simultaneous distribution of data to thousands of clients. The company needed a solution to this problem which could provide extra compute power and on-demand scalability while remaining cost-effective.

AT-A-GLANCE

Challenges

• Competitive and fast-changing financial services market

• Batch-oriented approach too slow

• Need for more compute power and greater scalability

Solution

• Pivotal GemFire

Key Benefits

• Increased Data Processing Speed – 60x faster

• Greater Scalability

CASE STUDY

Major Financial InstitutionSTRENGTHENING COMPETITIVENESS WITH SPEED AND SCALABILITY

OVERVIEW

“ Pivotal GemFire has dramatically improved the speed with which we can react to changing market conditions. We can now manage risk in real-time, and run calculations 60 times faster than ever before – all of which has made a major impact on our business.”

— CTO, leading financial services organization

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Pivotal is a registered trademark or trademark of Pivotal Software, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners. © Copyright 2014 Pivotal Software, Inc. All rights reserved. This document was originally published in 09/11 and is being republished with limited, non-substantive updates in 10/13. Published in the USA. PVTL-CS-330-11/13

At Pivotal our mission is to enable customers to build a new class of applications, leveraging big and fast data, and do all of this with the power of cloud independence. Uniting selected technology, people and programs from EMC and VMware, the following products and services are now part of Pivotal: Greenplum, Cloud Foundry, Spring, GemFire and other products from the VMware vFabric Suite, Cetas and Pivotal Labs.

CASE STUDY MAJOR FINANCIAL INSTITUTION

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SOLUTIONPivotal GemFire provides power and agility

To improve these processes, the bank undertook an IT infrastructure transformation project with Pivotal GemFire at the heart. Pivotal GemFire, a distributed data management platform, provides dynamic scalability, high performance and low latency – enabling the bank to realize substantial performance and efficiency gains.

BUSINESS BENEFITSPivotal GemFire delivers the following business benefits:

Increased Data Processing Speed “Pivotal GemFire enabled us to move from batch calculations to a continuous real-time evaluation of risk, which means we now run risk calculations 60 times faster,” says the bank’s CTO. “Calculations that previously took hours now take minutes and those that used to take minutes, now only take seconds. We can react immediately to changing market conditions, meaning we stay ahead of the game.”

Greater Scalability Using Pivotal GemFire, the bank has eliminated the bottlenecks inherent in the relational database model by moving to a more agile and flexible virtual environment. Previously, a central server would struggle to provide data to thousands of customers. Now, Pivotal GemFire’s horizontally-scalable virtual servers can be added whenever they are needed, instantly creating the extra capacity required to eliminate any performance delays.

CONCLUSIONBy delivering on the promise of compute power and scalability, Pivotal GemFire has enabled the bank to remain competitive in this aggressive and constantly changing industry.

“Pivotal GemFire has radically improved two of the key areas of our business – pricing and risk management,” the bank’s CTO concludes. “Because our data is always up to date, and because we can handle the high volume of calculations required for our customers, we believe we are as well prepared as we can be to thrive in a fast-changing and competitive market.”

LEARN MORETo learn more about our products, services and solutions, visit us at pivotal.io.

“ Pivotal GemFire has radically improved two of the key areas of our business – pricing and risk management. Because our data is always up to date, and because we can handle the high volume of calculations required for our customers, we believe we are as well prepared as we can be to thrive in a fast-changing and competitive market.”

— CTO, leading financial services organization