OCBC Bank: Developing a new IT architecture.

(From Network Computing Asian Edition)

Byline: Oo Gin Lee

In 1999, Singapore's OCBC Bank developed a new IT architecture to support its strategy to become a leading financial services institution in the region. A critical driver in the development of this new architecture was the IT team's continued ability to meet the business needs of the bank in a timely and cost effective manner.

"Although our systems had served us well in the past, we needed to improve our ability to respond to the fast changing needs of business," said Cheong Yin Ping, Head of Technology Strategy and Management, OCBC Bank. "Historically our application systems had been tightly integrated to facilitate straight through processing (STP). However, we had reached the situation where launching new products and services and migrating the systems to newer platforms was becoming a time consuming and costly process."

After the new IT architecture design was completed, the IT team's first priority was to implement the enterprise application integration (EAI) middleware technology, which would facilitate the integration of new systems to the existing ones in the bank. After careful evaluation, they selected and implemented MiNT software from Sunguard Business Integration in early 2000.

New integration technology

The OCBC technology environment is complex, with a range of platforms, including Tandem, AS400, and Unix machines. In addition to the inherent complexity of interfacing across different platforms, the applications also needed to be changed as interfaces are developed to support new business requirements.