Microsoft SQL ServerCustomer Solution Case Study

Top U.S. Bank Optimizes Solution, Simulating Workload for 13 Million Online Users

OverviewCountry or Region: United StatesIndustry: Financial services—Banking

Partner ProfileWith its head office in Brookfield, Wisconsin, Fiserv offers a range of technology solutions—such as the Corillian Online banking solution—to financial services institutions worldwide.

Business SituationA Fiserv customer, a top-ten U.S. bank, wanted to improve the scalability and performance of its online banking solution.

SolutionFiserv designed an online banking solution based on Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2.

Benefits Increases customer loyalty and

retention Improves performance Unlimited data storage

“Using the scalability features built into Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2, Corillian Online can easily support up to five years of transactional data for one of the top-10 banks in the United States.”

-Mike Lader, Product Development Director, Fiserv

Faced with growing demands for a seamless, contextual online banking experience, one of the top-ten banks in the United States wanted to provide online banking users with the ability to access and analyze long-term transactional data. The bank worked with Microsoft Partner Fiserv to ensure that the Fiserv online banking and Personal Money Manager (PMM) solution had the scalability and performance to meet the bank’s mission critical workloads. Now, the bank can address these requirements and drive customer satisfaction by integrating in-demand information into the connected digital lifestyles of its customers.

SituationFiserv, a Microsoft Partner based in Brookfield, Wisconsin, is a leading provider of information management and e-commerce solutions for the financial services industry. The company has more than 16,000 clients worldwide and its solutions are currently being used by some of the financial industry’s largest banks.

A leading provider of online banking solutions for the last 15 years, Fiserv offers a suite of online banking solutions, including the flagship Corillian Online, a licensed product for medium and large institutions that is typically deployed on-premises in the bank’s environment. Corillian Online integrates online banking, payments, and personal financial management tools into a single user interface.

As a result, bank customers can access all their financial transaction details—such as money transfers, bill payments, and pending transactions—from one page. The product features the optional Personal Money Manager (PMM) tool, which gives users instant, easy access to a comprehensive history of transactional data, organized into meta-views and micro-views of their spending behaviors. PMM helps banks improve customer satisfaction by providing them with accessible insight into their everyday financial lives.

A Fiserv customer—one of the top-ten largest banks in the United States—wanted to make additional transactional data available to their customers via their PMM solution. The delivery of this type of value-added capacity enables a bank to

differentiate itself and improve customer satisfaction.

Specifically, the bank was interested in giving users the ability to access and analyze several years of transactional data. Mike Lader, Product Development Director, Fiserv, says, “Typically, banks in their peer set have between 60 and 90 days of transaction history in their systems. But this particular bank wanted to provide their customers with the ability to perform year-to-year analysis of transaction data. The bank’s objective was to support up to five years of transaction history.”

In addition to improving the scalability of their PMM capabilities, the bank also sought to improve the performance of its online banking solution to achieve the best customer experience possible. “The bank wanted the ability to handle years of records, but it didn’t want system performance—or its customers—to be affected,” says Lader.

SolutionFiserv demonstrated Corillian Online in a laboratory test so the bank could evaluate the solution’s scalability and performance. The solution is based on the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 and developed using the Microsoft Visual Studio Ultimate development system. It runs on Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 software and the Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise operating system.

During a three-week period at a Microsoft Technology Center, Fiserv and the bank conducted performance and scalability tests of Corillian Online. The bank asked Fiserv to design a system that could store

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more than 65 terabytes of transaction data in a distributed system, so customers could access multiple years of history from the first day of enrollment online. “Scalability was key for the bank—it needed proof that Corillian Online could handle large amounts of data,” says Lader.

Approximately 13 million virtual online banking users and 47 million accounts were created for the tests, which were conducted on 12 web servers, 12 application servers, a relationship manager server, and two database server clusters. This configuration was set up to replicate the bank’s online banking application infrastructure. “Because of the amount of data the bank wanted to store, we prepopulated the PMM databases with up to five years of transaction history,” says Lader.

During tests, Fiserv wanted to see how the system would cope with the loading of millions of data records. “We needed to establish how online users would be affected,” says Lader. Fiserv tested a PMM transaction load of more than 155 million records, with 3,000 virtual users, which simulated a much larger number of concurrent users. Lader says: “We wanted to simulate the experience a substantial amount of users performing transactions at the same time, to see what performance would be like.”

BenefitsUsing Corillian Online and PMM, the bank can now provide its online customers with a transaction history of up to five years, an often requested capability which helps improve customer satisfaction. And with increased scalability and performance, the bank can store large amounts of data and

deliver it to customers quickly, which sets the bank apart from the competition.

Increases Customer Satisfaction“Using the scalability features built into Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2, Corillian Online can easily support up to five years of transactional data for one of the top-ten banks in the United States” says Lader. “Now, if the bank’s customers sign up for online banking, that transaction history will be readily accessible to them. Customers will not have to wait for this information to populate over time, because the data is already stored. That’s a significant point of differentiation in a very competitive market.”

Improves PerformanceThe Corillian Online tests also demonstrated that system performance is not affected even when banking transactions run simultaneously. “We originally thought the solution would be able to process 500,000 records a minute, but the tests showed 1.37 million records a minute,” says Lader. In addition, performances of key dashboards, such as checking account and credit card account transactions, were reduced from 40 seconds initially to between 5 and 7 seconds.”

Unlimited Data StorageAs predicted by Fiserv, the laboratory tests showed that Corillian Online scalability is only limited to the amount of memory deployed. Initial trials were based on the notion that 70 terabytes were going to be needed to store 5 years’ worth of data. Testing proved that only 30 terabytes were necessary to hold 5 years of data and

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“There’s no doubt the Microsoft solution gives the bank the scalability and performance it needs to handle increased customer demand for online financial information.”

Mike Lader, Product Development Director, Fiserv

scalability testing beyond that limit proved to not materially degrade performance.

This is a major advantage for the bank, which can now ensure that its PMM system will be able to store large amounts of customer data and deliver that data to customers quickly. “With the way Corillian Online is built, using the 64-bit version of Windows Server 2008 R2 and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2, the bank will be able to add new web and application servers incrementally to cope with much larger system loads in the future,” says Lader. “There’s no doubt the Microsoft solution gives the bank the scalability and performance it needs to handle increased customer demand for online financial information.”

Microsoft Server Product PortfolioFor more information about the Microsoft server product portfolio, go to:www.microsoft.com/servers

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For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:www.microsoft.com

For more information about Fiserv products and services, visit the website at: www.fiserv.com

For more information about the Fiserv and Microsoft partnership, visit the website at: www.microsoft.com/fiserv

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published September 2012

Software and Services Microsoft Server Product Portfolio− Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise− Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2

Enterprise

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Technologies− Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5

Partners− Fiserv