New Zealand’s largest bank, Westpac, is considering moving to a thin-client architecture.
Westpac spokeswoman Bridgit Vivian says the bank is scoping the use of a server-oriented platform but hasn’t yet formed a view. There has been a small amount of work done with systems integrator gen-i and the bank is keeping watch on moves by its Australian parent, Westpac, in the area, Vivian says.
According to Computerworld fellow publication Australian Reseller News, gen-i is chasing a 20,000-seat Citrix deal with Westpac in Australia. If the deal goes ahead it will be the largest Citrix licensing agreement in the region, surpassing Citrix’s 10,320-seat deal last year with the Commonwealth Bank.
In May gen-i signed a 10,000 seat Citrix deal in Australia with insurance company NRMA.
Westpac has 6000 staff spread across 211 branches and 5000 desktops migrating to Windows 2000. The bank is 18 months into its 10-year, $1 billion outsourcing deal with IBM and Telstra.
It is undergoing a number of developments including enhancing online banking capabilities, rebuilding branch networks and call centre systems, and upgrading card processing platforms.
Core systems are based on CICS/Cobol/DB2 and VSAM running on IBM CMOS. It uses Oracle financials, Lotus Domino on Sun Solaris for its intranet, and has 65 Unix platforms.