“HP’s next generation AlphaServer systems
running OpenVMS have helped us improve
our performance and uptime. They have
reduced the close of time of our largest area,
Vienna, by more than 40%. This gives our
traders the opportunity to exploit other
markets.” — Guenther Wabnig, CEO,
WAVE Solutions, Bank Austria Creditanstalt Success story: HP technology yields quantum performance
gain at Bank Austria Creditanstalt

Supporting strategic growth
In today’s dynamic global financial world, you have to
keep moving forward to maintain an edge. Intelligent
growth has long been the hallmark of Bank Austria
Creditanstalt. It is the number one bank in Austria, with
total assets of about EUR150 billion. As a global player in the treasury market, Bank Austria
Creditanstalt counts on next generation HP AlphaServer
systems running the HP OpenVMS operating system to
handle its electronic funds transfers. For years, Bank Austria Creditanstalt has used a funds
transfer application from HP partner Wall Street Systems,
Inc., a leading provider of global treasury and capital
markets solutions and services. This application was the
subject of recent testing at the HP engineering benchmark
center in New Hampshire. Running on the latest version
of OpenVMS and on a next generation HP AlphaServer
GS1280 system, the Wall Street System^® treasury engine
exceeded one million funds transfer transactions per
day — representing a five-fold improvement from the
previously measured peak performance. Out of the laboratory and into the real world
If results this impressive could be achieved in the lab,
what would happen in the real world? Always looking to
raise the bar on performance, the bank’s IT group, WAVE
Solutions, decided to put the new system to the test at
their operation. Karin Spevak, Manager, IT, WAVE Solutions, Bank Austria
Creditanstalt, explains the results. “We are absolutely
impressed by the performance that the new AlphaServer
GS1280 with OpenVMS delivers for our Wall Street
Systems banking application. Timely end-of-day roll up is
a challenge for many financial operations. The GS1280
dramatically accelerates this process and cuts the time
required in half. After using the next generation
AlphaServers in the field test, our users were so excited
about them that they don’t want to give them back.” Prior to the field test, the bank had been running its
application on HP AlphaServer GS160 systems. Spevak
describes the process of upgrading to the new platform.
“The move to the new system was amazingly simple. It
was almost a non-event, as it always has been in the past.
We didn’t have to make changes to our applications.
We just loaded them up and they ran significantly faster.” Bank Austria Creditanstalt has relied on the OpenVMS
operating system for more than 17 years. “The treasury business is very dynamic and has to
respond quickly to market activities, so performance is
vital,” explains Spevak. “The Bank Austria Creditanstalt
treasury is trading 24 hours a day to a worldwide market.
Therefore, it’s critical that the system is always up and
running. That’s the reason why we choose OpenVMS
clusters — because they provide outstanding
performance, availability and security.” Running in a disaster tolerant configuration, OpenVMS
clusters also provide the bank with significant
economic benefits, including lower maintenance and
administration costs. “OpenVMS clusters provide application failover during
normal trading hours. This increased performance means
that our operations team can do its maintenance work
during normal trading hours without disturbing the
traders. We can save a lot of money and avoid the
expense of working on weekends,” says Spevak. Innovation in action
As a forward-thinking organization, Bank Austria
Creditanstalt embraces technical innovation. “The goal of
the bank is to grow and become more profitable,” says
Wabnig. “We need increasingly more reliability, speed
and security, as well as the option to upgrade because
we want to further expand our business into new markets.
With the introduction of the next generation AlphaServers
running OpenVMS, we feel very confident that HP can
support our growing demand in terms of scalability,
security and technology in general.” “We cannot stand still. The markets are
going faster and therefore innovation in the
IT sector is crucial for us, especially for our
treasury business. We rely on HP to keep
us on the leading edge technology-wise
because infrastructure is the basis for
growth and becoming more profitable.”
— Guenther Wabnig, CEO, WAVE
Solutions, Bank Austria Creditanstalt

The latest version of OpenVMS delivers a number of
significant quality and performance enhancements.
The results include even better availability, system and
application performance, security and scalability. The dynamics of the treasury business also requires
massive storage capacity. HP helps Bank Austria
Creditanstalt meet this demand with a storage area
network that handles 20 TB of disk space. A three-way partnership
Bank Austria Creditanstalt credits much of the success of
its technology solution to a good working relationship
with its partners. “It’s not the core business of a bank to run computer
centers,” explains Wabnig. “We have to rely on
technology partners. HP has long been a strong partner
for Bank Austria Creditanstalt. HP clearly understands that
it’s the whole solution — including system, applications
and ultimately business results — that matter to us. More
than half a year prior to the product announcement, HP
was working closely with Wall Street Systems to ensure that our complete solution worked perfectly. We work
closely with HP to see what the new products are and
how they can contribute to the business plans of Bank
Austria Creditanstalt.” Bank Austria Creditanstalt is one of Wall Street System’s
extended sites, with a history of more than 12 years.
“Bank Austria Creditanstalt has always been in the front
line of development of new Wall Street functionality and
modules,” says Spevak. “It’s important for us that our
software and hardware developers have a close
relationship, which we see with Wall Street and HP.
We gain a lot of fruitful results from this teamwork.” Another team effort is in the support capacity. “One of
the strengths of HP is the spirit of service and its global
presence,” states Wabnig. “On one hand, we have a
very close relationship with the Austrian subsidiary of HP
in terms of ongoing business support. On the other hand,
we benefit from the company’s research and
development, which is done in the U.S.” Looking ahead
What’s on the technical horizon for Bank Austria
Creditanstalt? The bank is looking forward to the porting
of OpenVMS on the Intel^® Itanium^® architecture. “Bank Austria Creditanstalt sees the porting strategy of
HP as a good strategic effort to extract the OpenVMS
system from the underlying hardware,” says Spevak.
“We think this will increase the viability of OpenVMS for
a very long time.” Wabnig adds, “The HP difference is its ability to deliver
innovative and reliable solutions for both today and
tomorrow. With the introduction of the new AlphaServers
and OpenVMS 7.3-1 — and the roadmap to the Itanium^®
platform — we see the continued commitment of HP to
support the growing business of Bank Austria
Creditanstalt in the future.” “The new enhancements in OpenVMS
7.3-1, together with the architectural
enhancements in the AlphaServer GS1280,
give us much more flexibility for disaster
recovery and much more system
availability.” —Karin Spevak, Manager IT,
WAVE Solutions, Bank Austria Creditanstalt

Adaptive enterprise solution overview:
Increase performance to meet business needs Challenge • Create an infrastructure that offers increased stability • Meet the bank’s needs for increased performance • Provide flexibility to align IT platform with changing business needs • Implement Wall Street System^® treasury engine running on next generation,
EV7-based HP AlphaServer systems and
the HP OpenVMS operating system • Employ OpenVMS clusters to ensure high availability, security and stability • Realized performance increase of 40% • Achieved fault tolerance and reduced risk of downtime • Improved scalability to meet future growth Solution Results At a glance • Name: Bank Austria Creditanstalt • Headquarters: Vienna, Austria • Founded: 1880 •  URL: www.ba-ca.com/en/index.html • Products/services: Bank Austria Creditanstalt operates a comprehensive network of 400 branches in Austria and
serves more than 1.9 million private customers. With
more than 120,000 corporate customers, it is also the
leading provider of financial services to the Austrian
business sector. The bank also focuses on business
development in growth markets in Central and Eastern
Europe, where it has built the leading banking network
in this region — with more than 900 offices in 16
countries — offering services from retail banking to
investment banking. Technology highlights • Hardware: OpenVMS cluster consisting of HP AlphaServer 1280 systems and a storage area network
(SAN), running on two sites for disaster tolerance • Operating system: OpenVMS v7.3-1 • Storage: SAN consisting of EVA, Enterprise Storage Array1200, EMA1200, ESL9190SDLT with
approximately 20 TB disk space • Services: BCSA 7x24 + Pool hours for software consulting and hardware installations, as well as other
support from HP Global Services For more information on how working with HP can benefit you, contact your
local HP service representative or visit us at www.hp.com Intel and Itanium are registered trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and other countries.
Wall Street Systems is a registered trademark of Wall Street Systems, Inc. © Copyright 2003 Hewlett-Packard Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without
notice. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction, adaptation or translation without prior written permission is prohibited,
except as allowed under the copyright laws. 5981-8436EN [an error occurred while processing this directive]