White PapersAfter assessing all of these challenges, Wachovia determined it needed a better infrastructure to support the significant increases in trading volume and reduce time to results of risk reports. To meet the traders' and risk managers' requirements, the bank decided it needed to either purchase additional hardware or implement a distributed computing solution.
BackgroundA leader among its banking peers in creating shareholder value, WachoviaCorporation (NYSE: WB) is one of the largest providers of financial services to retail,brokerage and corporate customers. Of its core businesses and part of the Wachovia Securities entity, the Corporate andInvestment Bank division provides capital raising, market making, financial advisoryand transaction processing services to meet the needs of corporate and institutionalclients worldwide. The group is comprised of several business units, includingInvestment Banking, Fixed Income, Treasury Services, Credit Capital Markets,Equity Linked Products, International and Principal Investing, Equity Capital Marketsand Capital Finance.The Corporate and Investment Bank division is headquartered in Charlotte, N.C.,with offices in Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, San Francisco, Atlanta, Boston,Chicago and London. ChallengeAfter migrating to a new trading platform, Wachovia's Corporate and InvestmentBank encountered performance problems when trying to leverage the system'senhanced analytic capabilities. The solution lacked scalability and processingspeed, and could not reliably guarantee failover capabilities in the event ofhardware, software or network failures. In addition, it was not able to prioritizecomputing jobs; dynamically match jobs with available, appropriate resources; orautomatically reschedule jobs in the event of an interruption. Users also faced unacceptable report turnaround times. For example, overnight riskreports with enhanced analytics took up to 15 hours, preventing traders fromknowing their limits at the start of each day and affecting their decision-makingabilities. Further to this, certain complex but highly profitable products could notbe priced accurately within necessary time constraints. After assessing all of these challenges, Wachovia determined it needed a betterinfrastructure to support the significant increases in trading volume and reduce timeto results of risk reports. To meet the traders' and risk managers' requirements, thebank decided it needed to either purchase additional hardware or implement adistributed computing solution. Case Study: WachoviaVirtualize Applications Over Shared Infrastructure"DataSynapse has built its business ona grid computing platform that allowscustomized applications to usevirtualization and automation to shareIT resources in a heterogeneousenvironment&as organizations becomemore mature in managing IT servicesover time, a natural inclination is tooptimize by consolidating and reducingcosts." - Gartner, Cool Vendors in ITOperations, 2006Untitled DocumentCase Study: WachoviaPage 2SolutionSeeking to improve application performance and reliability while extending the valueof its existing hardware, Wachovia focused on ways to leverage its underutilizedresources. After exploring its options, the Corporate and Investment Bank found apartner in DataSynapse and its GridServer offering. An award-winning, production-proven solution, GridServer eliminates current ITconstraints and creates a new paradigm of capability expansion, deliveringunparalleled advancements in time to results, resiliency, throughput and time todeploy. Ideally suited to meet the needs of complex organizations like financialservices companies, Wachovia's Corporate and Investment Bank first deployedDataSynapse's GridServer in April 2001 to support the bank's production system. The standards-based solution quickly proved successful, harnessing idle computingresources to generate unparalleled levels of application performance, scalability andreliability. Wachovia has gone on to implement GridServer within its Credit, GlobalRisk, Equity and Mortgage-backed Securities areas. GridServer has been deployed over several hundred processors to maximize cross-platform resources, including underutilized and intermittently available CPUs runningon Sun Solaris and Windows. As a layer between Wachovia's financial applicationsand its underlying computing resources and IT infrastructure, GridServer enables theCorporate Investment Bank to build a real-time application operating environment tomeet critical service levels. ResultsUpon implementation, the Corporate Investment Bank realized GridServer drovesignificant application performance gains from time to build and deploy toimprovements in scalability and resiliency. It was clear to see the steps toward aservice-oriented operating environment saved money and improved computingefficiency. "DataSynapse's ability to grid-enable a wide range of resources includingtransactional and service-based applications makes it a compelling solution," saidMark Cates, chief technology officer for Wachovia's Corporate and Investment Bank."We rely on GridServer to scale the business, control infrastructure costs andmaintain a high quality of service for our clients."Some of the benefits Wachovia has experienced using GridServer include: Performance Gains: The solution enables four times more volume and 25 times more modeling simulations, supporting the trade of complex financial products. Improved Report Turnaround Time: Overnight risk reports have transformed from a 15-hour process to a 15-minute intraday cycle, enabling traders to make better decisions based on the most timely data.By unlocking the performance of mission-critical applications to improve operationalefficiencies, Wachovia has been able tocreate new business opportunities and reapthe benefits of DataSynapse's GridServertechnology. Untitled DocumentCase Study: WachoviaPage 3 Increased Trading Volume: Trading volume for exoticinstruments tripled, generating profits per deal of up to 1 million. Increased Simulations: The bank can run up to 100,000 simulations per deal as compared to 4,000 prior to GridServer. By unlocking the performance of mission-critical applications to improveoperational efficiencies, Wachovia has been able to create new businessopportunities and reap the benefits of DataSynapse's GridServertechnology. Looking ForwardIn 2004, Wachovia's Corporate and Investment Bank's architectureteamand DataSynapse conducted an assessment and design process todetermine how to extend the bank's use of GridServer. The evaluation wasconducted utilizing DataSynapse's patent-pending GRIDesign methodology,an approach for calculating the potential business value derived fromimplementing GridServer across application areas.Not only did the joint discovery process uncover specific areas ofopportunity where GridServer could be applied to drive significantimprovements, it led to DataSynapse's GridServer becoming Wachovia'senterprise standard. Wachovia's Corporate and Investment Bank will continue to implementGridServer across its business to transform the performance of mission-critical applications into cost savings and revenue generating opportunities.Additionally, as Wachovia looks to enable service-oriented architecturesacross other areas of its business, the Corporate and Investment Bank willserve as model for the rest of the firm. About DataSynapseDataSynapse, Inc. is a global provider of application virtualization software.The company's flagship products, GridServer and FabricServer", virtualizebusiness-critical applications and adaptively provision them across a real-time infrastructure. DataSynapse drives business agility through sharedservices, helping clients reduce the cost and complexity of their ITinfrastructure. The company is headquartered in New York City.
