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The company and its subsidiaries provide deposit, credit,
trust, and investment services to diverse retail, business,
and institutional clients as well as mortgage banking, asset
management, brokerage, and capital market services.
They operate more than 1,600 retail branches and more than
2,500 ATMs in 10 states and Washington, DC. In addition,
SunTrust offers several technology-based banking channels,
including Internet, PC, mobile, and automated telephone
banking.
From legacy “green screen” applications, SunTrust migrated
to Graphical User Interface (GUI) applications using
Internet technology. Additionally, they use frontend servers
for an Internet banking offering, with main transaction
processing running on CICS. IBM’s WebSphere MQ serves as a
transport mechanism on both AIX and the mainframe; DB2 is
the database of choice on the mainframe.
Glenn Schneck, assistant vice president, Mainframe Services,
Online Systems Services, notes that, “In the banking
industry, it’s critical to provide new products before the
competition; the natural evolution was by Web services
enabling our backbone systems.” He feels this allowed
SunTrust to introduce new products much faster and cheaper
than previously without Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA).
In fact, the most challenging application has been Internet
banking, due to the complexity of supporting servers,
connections, routers, etc. used before requests reach the
mainframe. ATM, mortgage loans, commercial loans, and many
other critical applications also execute primarily on the
mainframe.
SunTrust, with a decades-long history of mainframe use,
relies heavily on big iron as its IT environment backbone.
Its Atlanta, GA, data center runs production processing, and
a slightly smaller operation in Durham, NC, handles Disaster
Recovery (DR). IBM’s Geographically Dispersed Parallel
Sysplex (GDPS) connects these sites for real-time data
recovery.
IT’s mandate is to get more done with fewer resources;
Schneck, with his 26 years of experience in systems support
roles, interprets this as the need to “provide the bank with
exceptional IT solutions while reducing costs.” The bank
processes approximately 800 million transactions per month,
completing 98 percent in less then 300ms. Peak load is 1,000
transactions per second.
The primary data center has two IBM z9 systems, models
2094-714/S28. Each system provides 6,215 MIPS from general
purpose processors, plus five Internal Coupling Facility (ICF)
engines, two Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL) processors,
two IBM System z9 Integrated Information Processors (zIIPs),
and 208GB of memory. Primary software components are z/OS
1.8, CICS TS 3.1/3.2, WebSphere MQ V6, and DB2 V8 with New
Function Mode. The data center, designed for
high-availability and peak performance, is critical to
client support and the bank’s vision of quality products and
customer service.
Most applications are server-based packages; integration of
the mainframe is vital to SunTrust’s success, making CICS’
SOA critical, since front-end interfaces must mesh with core
solutions. Integration software lets developers quickly
respond to business requirements, bringing new products to
market in a fraction of the time required before Web service
implementation. In addition, recent projects created
granular services that can be reused in innovative and
unique ways.
In 2006, SunTrust installed CICS Transaction Gateway for
transactional access from a Java front-end and began a
Proof-of- Concept (POC) project to create Web services for
CICS applications. The strategic goal was to make current
processes within CICS available to all applications, and an
SOA approach was identified as the most efficient route for
current and future projects.
The POC used realistic business functions with each of three
vendors working in a one-week window. This was done to avoid
what Schneck calls the “Wizard of Oz” solution, which is
where a vendor visits and creates services without bank
staffers knowing what was involved. For the POC, SunTrust
personnel actually used the products to complete the tasks,
evaluating aspects such as ease of installation and use,
vendor support, reusability, training requirements, ability
to create composite applications, and achieving a purely
mainframe option. The POC demonstrated that the GT Ivory
product best satisfied the requirements. When more projects
required SOA using CICS, SunTrust purchased Ivory and began
modernizing the mainframe.
The initial POC involved two or three programmers who
effectively used the product with no formal training. Since
that time, two architects have trained more than 50 other
developers via an internal one-day class. GT Ivory’s visual
development environment allowed SunTrust to implement a pure
mainframe solution, avoiding added complexity or points of
failure. It also provides flexibility to run on other
platforms if desired, and supports front-end programming in
languages such as Visual Basic, .NET, Java, etc. An added
plus was two-phase commit database support.
The first project to use this technology was mobile banking,
which enabled customers to access accounts via cell phone
and perform many functions traditionally through Voice
Response Unit (VRU) or Internet banking. This was
efficiently implemented by creating 35 Web services without
writing any COBOL code. These services operate at a very
granular level to enhance reuse, facilitating the creation
of composite services for customer functions such as balance
transfers and account information.
The project started on Aug. 1, 2007, and proceeded through
several stages of testing and acceptance: development,
Integrated Testing/Client Acceptance (ITCA), Production
Readiness/Dress Rehearsal (PRDR), and production. ITCA and
PRDR require multiple iterations and PRDR includes several
performance tests. On Oct. 1, 2007, 60 days later, the
application entered pilot production. Since that time no
problem tickets have been generated.
Subsequently, the bank implemented—over a weekend— a sales
application feature allowing U.S. citizen clients or
prospects to open accounts online for consumer checking,
savings, and/or money market services, with immediate access
to online banking. Primary processing is done on the
mainframe using CICS and GT Ivory-created Web services. This
application required 48 Web services, plus two COBOL
programs for DB2 access.
These projects were justified on an ROI basis with business
unit assistance. The Web services enablement tool increased
ROI and enabled the removal of an antiquated vendor product.
Not surprisingly, customer authentication and identity
verification are critical for both financial protection and
government regulations. Since customers must be registered
for Internet banking before signing up for mobile banking,
the two access methods use the same sign-on criteria.
Challenge questions provided by Equifax confirm client
identity; the bank also allows customers to use eSignature
verification for agreement and/or saving electronic versions
of required account disclosures.
WebSphere MQ is used on the mainframe with the “hub” being
on AIX. But Schneck feels this “increases the chances of
outages, errors, and issues due to the addition of extra
hops to and from AIX, as well as imposing additional costs
for separate systems, support, and licenses.” He doesn’t
believe AIX accomplishes anything that couldn’t be processed
on z/OS and feels mainframe hubbing would reduce overall
costs.
Keeping track of SOA Web services requires expanded project
management and software inventory tools. The bank uses an
existing change management environment for SOA components
and an inplace mechanism for publishing services. Governance
is an ongoing process.
Schneck notes that SOA is really nothing new to the
mainframe, since they’ve used “services” for many years. The
ability to publish Web services for use by front-end
processes allows the mainframe to be used as a large server.
“GT Ivory lets us efficiently and rapidly create Web service
interfaces to our existing CICS business functions,” he
says, “saving 75 percent of mobile banking project
development time by using it vs. COBOL application coding.”
Tom Sedlack, SunTrust’s solutions architect, adds that SOA
governance is an extension of IT governance. “In addition to
that,” he says, “we plan to implement WebSphere Service
Registry and Repository (WSRR) and IBM Tivoli Composite
Application Manager (ITCAM) for SOA to help in managing
services from both the design and run-time perspectives.”
For several years, Schneck, with his manager’s blessing, has
touted benefits of Linux on System z and potential savings
from server consolidation in areas such as electricity,
cooling, and floor space. Linux on System z implementation
is planned in the next few months, running DB2 Connect and
possibly Oracle databases and WebSphere Process Server,
among other applications.
During Schneck’s time at SunTrust, there has been occasional
talk about “migrating off the mainframe,” perhaps to
distributed AIX or Windows; he has refuted this by
demonstrating that the true cost and support of a
distributed architecture doesn’t match mainframe attributes.
He sees migration as infeasible, “considering the workload,
availability, scalability, reliability, disaster recovery,
and other requirements placed on the IT organization.” In
fact, some of these application migration attempts have
failed.
He calls CICS “The world class” transaction processor and
the backbone of SunTrust’s environment. “IBM Hursley does a
great job of listening to their user base, and changes they
make are what keep CICS number one in the transaction
processing arena,” Schneck says.
And he notes that an overall “green effect” (not to be
confused with “green screen”!) lets companies save on all
environmentals by consolidating workloads on a mainframe, as
well as reduce software license costs. Being convincing, he
feels, stems from “persistence and a belief in what is right
for the company,” and the fact the mainframe is so deeply
ingrained in the corporation and so successfully supports
both legacy and innovative applications.
Countering industry rumors of mainframe skills shortages,
SunTrust’s technical support department finds the qualified
workers it needs. And Schneck sees success in the movement
within IBM and the SHARE user group organization to get
younger people excited about the mainframe.
From many SunTrust perspectives, the mainframe remains a
vital platform for hosting innovative banking products and
will continue to be modernized with SOA enhancing CICS.
Customer service and IT-enabled innovative products such as
mobile banking and the sales application center feature help
make SunTrust an industry leader.
By Gabe Goldberg
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