Brussels, 10 October 2012 - Swift, the financial messaging provider for more than 10,000 banking organisations, securities institutions and corporate customers in 212 countries and territories, today announced that customers can now deploy Alliance Access - its flagship messaging interface - on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
Financial institutions are increasingly adopting Red Hat Enterprise Linux for core systems because Linux-based systems offer added flexibility and high performance while costing less to install and run. With Linux-based technology, organisations can change and adapt their systems without being tied to a single type of hardware or application provider. The addition of Red Hat Enterprise Linux as a Swift-supported platform responds to strong interest from enterprises and demonstrates Swift's commitment to helping the financial community reduce cost and increase efficiency.
Swift is collaborating with Red Hat, Inc., the world's leading provider of open source solutions, to deliver Swift applications on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating platform. Swift's new Linux offering will provide the same security, reliability and performance as its existing versions for AIX, Solaris and Microsoft-based products.
Prior to launching Swift systems on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Swift conducted pilot (beta) tests with several Swift customers, including Clearstream. Willy Schockert, Director UNIX and ICSD Infrastructure, Clearstream, comments: "We welcome the Swift initiative to support Red Hat Enterprise Linux, since it aligns with our Linux server strategy. Our pilot tests of Swift's Linux-based applications demonstrated that the environment is very stable, with performance levels that met or exceeded our existing UNIX-based systems. The support from Swift was excellent and demonstrated their expertise with this new platform. We are now looking forward to moving Swift onto Linux in the live environment."
Victor Abbeloos, Head of Interfaces and Integration at Swift, said: "Many customers have told us that Linux deployment is part of their overall IT strategy. By offering Red Hat Enterprise Linux support in addition to our existing software platforms, we're giving customers the freedom to choose the right IT solution for their business. We're very pleased to collaborate with Red Hat so that our customers can continue to enjoy security, high performance and peace of mind."
"Red Hat Enterprise Linux is both extremely flexible and highly secure - a combination that is critical for financial organizations that are routinely managing and processing large amounts of data," said Jim Totton, vice president, Platform Business Unit. "Adding Red Hat Enterprise Linux support to its industry-leading Alliance Access solution means that Swift's customers will be able to easily and successfully process secure data transactions through our powerful open source platform."
As Swift's leading ‘on-premises' messaging interface, Alliance Access is geared to customers with medium to large volumes of message traffic, enabling thousands of financial institutions worldwide to process millions of highly secure transactions each day.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux support is already available for Swift's Alliance Messaging Hub (AMH), which enables the largest global financial institutions to manage very high message volumes. Swift is also launching Red Hat Enterprise Linux support for its Alliance Gateway, Alliance Web Platform and SwiftNet Link products.
More details on the evolution of Swift's interfaces portfolio will be presented during the "Alliance Access - Moving with the times, building a stronger platform" session at Sibos 2012 in Osaka, Japan.
About Swift
Swift is a member-owned cooperative that provides the communications platform, products and services to connect more than 10,000 banking organisations, securities institutions and corporate customers in 212 countries and territories. Swift enables its users to exchange automated, standardised financial information securely and reliably, thereby lowering costs, reducing operational risk and eliminating operational inefficiencies. Swift also brings the financial community together to work collaboratively to shape market practice, define standards and debate issues of mutual interest.
For more information, please refer to our website http://www.swift.com/ or contact:
Swift
Press Office
Tel: +32 2 655 3377
pressoffice@swift.com
