Svenska Handelsbanken Enhances Risk Management With Platform Computing

TORONTO, Nov. 1, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Platform Computing, the leader in cluster, grid and cloud management software, today announced that Svenska Handelsbanken, one of Sweden's leading personal and corporate banking groups, has adopted Platform Symphony to power high-performance analytics with grid computing.  Platform Symphony provides Svenska Handelsbanken with a single grid which delivers distributed compute capacity for multiple business-critical applications.

Svenska Handelsbanken initially engaged with Platform Computing in September 2009 as it sought to maximize hardware resources and improve data center efficiency. Prior to the installation, the bank was building and maintaining its own internal system. Svenska Handelsbanken now has the flexibility to add new compute infrastructure and respond to hardware issues transparently. The deployment of Platform Symphony has increased hardware utilization and is expected to reduce application development costs.

One of the key strategic functions of the grid is to run core applications for front office applications. The third party solution that provides these applications is SunGard's Front Arena, a global capital markets solution that delivers position control across multiple asset classes and business lines. The applications are used by many areas of the bank including the equities division. New risk regulations in Sweden require running more risk scenarios to support better risk management and planning, which in turn, require more compute power.  The grid effectively delivers this through more effective resource pooling and workload management.

"The Swedish banking landscape is continually evolving and we are committed to providing first-class services to our customers and having the right technical infrastructure allows us to be more agile than our competitors," said Peter Magnusson, Head of Systems Development, Trading Systems, Svenska Handelsbanken.  "After an evaluation process of the grid marketplace, we choose Platform Computing as a partner."

"Sweden is an exciting new market for Platform Computing and Handelsbanken is our first major banking client in the Nordic region, and we believe our grid computing expertise and world-class technology will deliver Svenska Handelsbanken the strategic business results it requires," said Charles Jarvis, Vice President Financial Services, EMEA, Platform Computing. "We are confident that enabling high performance analytics with grid computing provides Svenska Handelsbanken a competitive edge over its peers as they deliver industry-leading services to customers."

"We are pleased to be working alongside Platform Computing to help Handelsbanken scale its resources, run calculations more quickly and improve efficiencies," commented Nils Unden, Chief Technology Officer, SunGard Front Arena business unit.

Platform's flagship financial industry solution, Platform Symphony underpins core risk and analytics systems for the largest investment banks and other financial institutions around the world.  By managing grids composed of thousands of CPUs and optimizing the application workloads across shared resource pools, IT departments are better able to support multiple lines of business in response to business priority. With Platform Symphony, organizations can model pricing algorithms with more fidelity against a broader set of risk factors. This increase in modeling capacity allows firms to have high confidence in their quantification of risk.

About Platform Computing

Platform Computing is the leader in cluster, grid and cloud management software -- serving more than 2,000 of the world's most demanding organizations. For 18 years, our workload and resource management solutions have delivered IT responsiveness and lower costs for enterprise and HPC applications. Platform has strategic relationships with Cray, Dell, HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Red Hat, and SAS. Visit www.platform.com.

About Svenska Handelsbanken

Handelsbanken is a universal bank, the Bank provides services in the whole banking area. Founded in 1871, Handelsbanken is one of Sweden's leading banks with over 700 branches in 22 countries, and more than 10,000 employees. Handelsbanken has 460 branch offices in Sweden. Visit www.handelsbanken.com.

About SunGard Front Arena

SunGard's Front Arena is a global capital markets solution that delivers position control across multiple asset classes and business lines. Integrating sales and distribution, trading and risk management, and settlement and accounting, Front Arena helps capital markets businesses around the world improve performance, transparency and automation.

Visit www.sungard.com/frontarena.

Trademark Information: SunGard, the SunGard logo and Front Arena are trademarks or registered trademarks of SunGard Data Systems Inc. or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and other countries. All other trade names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

SOURCE Platform Computing