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Linux Lands Big Bank Account
An anonymous reader writes "The European arm of Banco do Brasil, the largest bank in South America, is switching from Windows to Linux to cut costs and centralise support. The long-term strategy is to phase out Windows completely. Linux is also being used to replace Windows on desktops. Vnunet has the whole story."
Actually, yes.
Next year we are going to have a new, leftwing, presindent from the Workers Party. He got elected in October. The Worker Party is well known for using free software. For example the Rio Grande do Sul State have adopted linux and free software solutions while under their ruling. Now the biggest city in the country, Sao Paulo have just adopted linux in some computer centers for the community. The city is also governed by the Worker Party. I don't know exactly what are Lula's, the new president, ideas concerning free software. But I bet he is sympathetic to the idea too.
But soon after the election (or just before, I really don`t remember now) the Brazilian newspapers said that Bill Gates had invited the new president to "chat"...
Simple solution:
"that's not encryption - it's a new perl script that I'm working on..." - from some Matrix parody
If you use FreeBSD you can just "make world", and all will be well again.
Here in Brazil, there are several brazilian and multi-national banks going to linux all they way. The Banestado (a state bank) changed all the ATMs from DOS to Linux. HSBC is using it on several layers of the organization. There's more comming but AFIAK it's not public information yet. Besides, I'm quite convinced there's a few others who already switched but don't tell anyone as a way to keep their internal process secret or just because they think some clients might feel unconfortable to have their accounts managed by a "hacker's OS". Well, whatever ;)
Adilson.
Faith can move mountains. I prefer dynamite.
The nature of Open Source security issues is rather different. First, the Open Source community is more forthcoming in its report of security vulnerabilities. Second, all the vulnerabilities in the report so fairly reported by a Windows advocacy site have been fixed. Third, most of the security vulnerabilities reported by CERT are less disasterous than their Windows counterparts.
Any OS has security vulnerabilities, including UNIX based systems. The difference between Open Source and MS issues is that MS users are at Microsoft's mercy when it comes to fixing them. Open Source problems are there for anyone to see and patch. Better the devil you know than the devil hidden away behind Redmod's closed source.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
Most banks actually use big hardware for the REAL data processsing, everything is done via an terminal emulator or complex screen capture programs to make it 'pretty'..
Windows currently is needed for compatiblity with stuff like 'word', 'exchange', and piddly loan processing programs, etc.
So somoene hacks in and grabs a email.. big deal. the statemnts/and $ are safe.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Canada Trust, one of the biggest banks in west Canada (I am not sure about their reach) use linux heavily. I went there to open an account, and while I was answering questions, what was on their desktop? KDE everywhere. People at desks and people working behind the counter were all using Linux and KDE on PCs. I would also suspect that if Linux is used on every desktop that it, or at very least some other Unix is used for all the servers.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
Yes Java runs faster in Linux with our tests with IBM 1.3.1 jdk actually it runs 30% percent faster. The Bank is using Websphere apps server 4.03 in Linux which is better optimized in linux since it is open source.
Time to ditch this fucking propietory, buggy windoze.
According to the article, all their custom apps are being ported to Java, so OS is irrelevant. They do make the assertion that Linux runs Java faster than Windows does, which is interesting since I hadn't heard anyone say that before (I'm not a Java guy, so I wouldn't know).
While I agree that the cost recovery will take time to be realized, I don't think it's going to take as long as you think.
First of all, we're talking about as many as 78,000 Windows licenses (probably closer to 50k) that are going to ultimately be replaced. While that probably doesn't pay for an iSeries, it's certainly not chump-change, and will definately help offset the innitial cost.
The real big deal, though, is in increased reliability, performance, and security, and centralizing their IT. Centralized IT support means fewer support people, since you have fewer machines at fewer locations that require "serious" support, and you can get away with having monkey-level techs at the rest of the sites.
Additionally, they're already using Samba for file and print servers, and NT security, which they say performs better than Windows does. Increased reliability and security also reduces IT costs.
And, of course, since they likely use mostly client/server apps, and Linux allows one to do that to a much higher degree than Windows ever will, that further allows them to reduce costs by reducing the hardware requirements for those (up to) 78,000 desktops which they are also converting.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Being conservative many banks never even considered switching to Windows in the first place. Most of them still run Unix or VMS for server systems. Most code is still written in Cobol. Almost any interface for financial applications is ASCII. They only use Windows on desktops in the front-office anyway. IMO the costs of migrating to Linux is especially low within banks and other financial businesses.
The real question is of course: what are their interest rates?
They're still in the early stages, they're consolodating to 9 machines, 9 huge machines. One consolodation converts 41 servers dwn to 3, which I think is a bad sign for MS, since this is a big machine and administration savings. The fact that you can consolodate down to 9 machines is also significant.
From the article:
The eventual 70,000 seats is the big news. They're not doing it all at once, they're going to do the servers first, the issues are more known there. They're doing a staged rollout, which is what they should do.
Anyways, saving money is always good, financial crisis or no. By going to Linux they:
Sure there will be problems along the way, but their analysis must have shown that on balance, this was the better way to go. This is a bank, they must have analyzed this pretty carefully.
A third iSeries server (a model 270) is used as a Lotus Domino server running mail for 250 staff throughout Europe. It also links into the bank's private intranet.
Apparently IBM has committed to a Linux version of the Notes client in the near future. Once that is a reality then Domino can be a full Linux app on both the server and the desktop. At the moment the Desktop Notes client will only run well under Windoze (or WINE with a lot of tweaking), while Domino has been running under Linux for awhile now.
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
Native windows applications are being used more and more for the front end (excel integration, .net, etc) -- older systems were done with windows as OS, and Xceed showing unix apps run from solaris. As much as I'd like to see linux on the desktop, for certain things, excel integration is just too useful to ignore.
re: banks as an indicator
Yes, to a certain degree. CEOs/execs of large companies (ms, dell, etc) regularly give talks at corp. headquarters, to advertise as well as look for suggestions on where to go next.
Still runs almost the entire ATM network. (On the client side anyway) Quietly, quietly, OS/2 is still a force in the clued in enterprise. One of the fastest Java interpreters, network support from hell and speaks pretty much every data format/protocol known to man. But you don't hear much about it anymore. Except in places where BSOD is not an option of course.
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.
Here in Brazil, the largest private bank, Bradesco is said to run M$ servers for their web operation. I believe that. But the other day I went to their branch and I saw scores of PCs with LCD screens running windows. When I asked them about the status of my accounts, they also brought up a nice terminal emulator screen.
Another large bank, Real ABN-AMRO, does the same.
Banco do Brasil, being the largest Brazilian bank (it's state-owned, by the way), might use terminal emulators on top of Windows as well. I've never managed to see actual windows, as I am not an account holder, but their systems seems to be heavily mainframe-based.
One of the largest credit card companies in Brazil is also entirely mainframe-based.
Seems that the market found equilibrium by itself: keep Windows where it belongs to (desktops) and use IBM mainframes and Unix boxes where critical data and processes must be kept. Frankly, I dont see the point of using Microsoft outside employees desktops.
As you guys know, Linux has a long way to go to achieve user-friendliness and if this trend continues, we'll see corporations forced to pay M$ licenses to run their desktops and paying even more to other companies so M$ can interoperate properly with mainframe and Unix servers.
Maybe this is the rationale behind M$ actions: they create their proprietary ecossystem at the expense of freedom and/or efficiency and/or market choice.