Middleware for FIs

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Typical Scenario in a Financial Institution

An island of different delivery channels and product applications that hardly interact with one another

Unable to provide the same customer experience across all delivery channels

The service levels are limited by the least capable back-end application e.g. A back-end application going offline during end of day activity

Very little capability of sharing customer information across the organization and thus unable to support cross-selling

High competitive pressure for supporting 24X7 operations and uniform customer experience

across channels

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The Option - Middleware

A software component that sits between application users at their PCs and the RDBMS or legacy systems that directly manage underlying data.

Different Types of middleware:

– Some provide a mechanism for data to get from place to place

– More sophisticated ones help manage application logic and resources

– Most robust ones support significant application functionality such as credit card transactions for e-commerce

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Middleware - Overview The existing technical architecture of most of the large FIs

consist of a distributed set of applications and subsystems. – The subsystems include Call Centres, Branches, ATMs, Credit Cards,

Customer Management, Loans, Data Warehousing, and others. They typically have their own environments (OS, database) and interfaces.

– Some of the subsystems, particularly distribution systems associated with providing consolidated views of customer information in real time, require data contained by other subsystems.

– The architecture calls for intelligent messaging to interconnect the various subsystems.

Messaging Middleware is used for communications between subsystems to provide the following features:– Support of intelligent message routing and reformatting, using rules– Support for both synchronous and asynchronous (queued) messaging– Consistent cross platform APIs– Scalability

CORBA, Enterprise Java Beans or COM is used for communications between components within subsystems

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Middleware Solution - eDP

It is a transaction-processing platform that allows a financial institution to: Offer the same transactions and data at all channels; Support cross-product transactions; Integrate external transaction networks; Perform complex, customer knowledge-based transaction

authorization Dynamically change the rules that guide the transactional

fulfillment processes

eDP enables this by providing an environment for business scripting and reusable business objects on top of state of the art technologies such as Enterprise Java Beans (EJB), Internet Application Servers, and Message Oriented Middleware (MOM). – eDP supports transaction logic via JavaScript– Accepts requests in native format/protocol of channel– Transmits messages to host in its native format and protocol

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Advantages of Component-based Solution

Allows the deployment of services in a staged approach with reduced project risks

Helps an institution to schedule rollout of services according to business strategies instead of technological constraints

Uses Object-Oriented concepts and best application servers like Weblogic, thus crating a secure and flexible environment where components of infrastructure layers can be easily replaced / enhanced

Use of middleware technologies like EJB enables independence of infrastructure systems. This allows deployment of a broad list of products and operational environments with a short implementation cycle

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eDP Features

Fast Deployment– When implementing eDP, only Business Scripts are constructed.

It is basically a configuration process that takes place. There is no need for further software development, saving time in all phases of the projects.

Low Cost

– eDP core requires no maintenance and Business Scripts are simple to implement, a small team can handle the implementation of new transactions and (re-usable) interfaces reducing project costs and risks. The testing phases are also reduced since existing, and already tested Business Scripts, can be reused.

Reusability

– Services and business logic are defined once and used several times in many transactions. Script Engine is implemented in a way that logic can be reused when implementing support for new transactions.

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eDP Features Contd.

Rapid Development Technology

– eDP uses the latest technology in systems design and development. With an optimized object-oriented approach, its components are implemented in Enterprise Java Beans framework.

Portability

– Once the business has decided on an implementation strategy of eDP all infrastructure components can be changed or enhanced with no impact on the business logic definition already implemented. Hardware, Operational Systems and even Application Server components can be replaced with no significant impact to eDP operations.

Configurable

– Business logic can be easily implemented or modified. eDP supports service definition in two different components that are able to handle any kind of financial transaction definition. These components do not require compilation or sophisticated programming know-how.

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eDP Features Contd.

Data Model Independence– Changes to the database model/ schema do not require

modifications in eDP components. Creation of new tables and fields, or changes in existing tables, can be performed without system shutdown or code modification.

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eDP Features by Virtue of Using an Application Server Reliability

– Provides a high availability environment with automatic fail-over capabilities

Availability– Through database replication and server redundancy eDP is available for

24 hours a day, 7 days a week

Load-balance– eDP brings to production several instances of the same Event Manager,

thus allowing uniform distribution of services across all service processors

Scalability– As a strategic solution for performance optimization and load-balance

purpose eDP can be executed on one or more machines at the same time. The multiple processes in execution share network and database resources.

Manageability– eDP allows production staff to be informed of any process disruption of

events that may cause problems to the continuity of the services. System resources, such as disk space, response time, memory allocation and transactions results are monitored periodically