Jordan Kuwait Bank cashes in on Sun implementation

"Banks are dynamic organisations and demand technology-enabled options that offer maximum return on investment and provide the flexibility necessary to manage periodic regulatory, economic, and operational changes," said Dr. Nasser M. Khraishi, assistant general manager, IT department, Jordan Kuwait Bank. "By opting for a new Sun solution, our performance has increased five- to eight-fold when compared to the previous mainframe system. We have also witnessed a drastic reduction in operational expenditure costs for running our core applications."

Established in 1976 as a joint investment by Jordanians, Kuwaitis and other Arab investors, JKB is now a major bank and financial services institution based in Amman, with branches in Palestine and Cyprus. JKB's previous investment in technology reached a point where all of its banking activities such as real time inter-branch communications, banking via SMS, SWIFT, ATMs, phone banking, Internet banking and mobile banking, were automated using the latest technologies available.

JKB had been using mainframe technologies to run its in-house developed core banking application for many years, but faced performance issues with the introduction of new branches and services. The bank was seeking an upgrade to newer software and hardware technology.

To overcome these challenges, Sun Microsystems provided JKB with its T1 technology 'Coolthreads' servers based on the Sun Fire T2000 form factor and Sparc-based database server machines, together with a storage area network to provide 2TB of storage space. JKB also migrated its core banking platform from Mainframe to a Sun Solaris platform and Oracle database.

"Sun appreciates the dynamic and fiercely competitive nature of the Middle East's financial services sector, and we address banks' business challenges by delivering solutions that enable these organistions to adjust to the new climate and yet overcome budgetary challenges," said Gary Hopwood, territory sales manager for Sun Microsystems in Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Libya. Sun MENA.

"Our ongoing roadmap in developing and implementing technology solutions that specifically address the problems that regional banks face will ensure that these financial groups have a clear path to upgrade and increase their competitive edge without the pain of directly managing their infrastructure."

Sun Fire T2000 servers are built for the delivery of demanding web and transaction services, with signification power, cooling and space saving that allows users to add significant capacity with existing data centre, thereby reducing operational costs. The Sun Fire T2000 with 'Coolthreads' technology is by far the new energy-efficient standard in enterprise computing.

Sun Solaris also offers impressive performance gains. It not only includes more than 600 new features, many of which are not available in any other operating system, but is also the most secure operating system on the planet.