Sun Microsystems, Inc, the creator and leading advocate of Java technology, today announced that its African partner, Bytes Technology Group (BTG), will demonstrate the Sun SWIFT solution for corporate and merchant banking at the SWIFT regional conference in Africa to be held in Mozambique from 22 to 25 May 2006.
Sun and Bytes have already had considerable success with this software and enabled FirstRand Bank Ltd to fully automate the processing of payment messages received from corporates in a SWIFT MA-CUG (Member Administered Closed User Group).
The SWIFT Africa Regional Conference is hosted by SWIFT, the industry-owned co-operative that supplies secure, standardised messaging services and interface software to financial institutions worldwide. This year's conference will focus on optimising market infrastructure - locally, regionally and globally.
FirstRand Bank has already taken great strides optimising its infrastructure and has introduced a centralised payments and messaging hub to enable it to decrease costs and enhance its agility to cope with the demands of operating in a rapidly changing business and legislative environment. By introducing this hub and utilising the Sun SWIFT solution, FirstRand is able to offer its customers flexible payments and messaging solutions with full STP (Straight Through Processing). The solution offered will also leverage off SWIFTNet to facilitate real-time interactive and bulk file handling services (SWIFTNet InterAct and SWIFTNet FileAct).
"We selected the Sun Java Composite Application Platform Suite solution to underpin our payment infrastructure as we needed a true service-oriented architecture with a strong middleware component that could encompass services such as message formatting and enrichment, transformation, bulk file handling and proactive SLA management," explains Rob Green, Head of Payments, FirstRand Bank Ltd and National Member Group Chairperson, South Africa.
"By supporting scores of leading financial services organisations, Sun Microsystems continues to support the global SWIFT community and provide the most scalable integration solution available for financial institutions today," said Ian Hill, Head of Business Integration Platforms, Sun Microsystems.
Tommy Erlank, Account Executive (BSI), Bytes Technology Group adds: "The solution clearly strengthens FirstRand's competitiveness in our highly contested banking industry by markedly improving service delivery. We are excited to be a part of this important initiative, providing leading technology and professional consulting services."
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Bytes Technology Group is a leading South African multibillion-rand high-technology group providing a broad range of products, technical skills and specialised services and solutions to support enterprise-wide information technology infrastructures, telephony and software systems across Africa and shareholder is Allied Electronics Corporation Limited (Altron).
FirstRand
FirstRand is one of the largest financial institutions in South Africa. The group employs 36 156 people and has a retail franchise footprint of 650 branches, 2 405 ATMs, 1 314 mini ATMs and in excess of 50 000 card acceptance devices. The FirstRand group is one of the top 10 listed companies of the Johannesburg Securities Exchange.
SWIFT
SWIFT is the industry-owned co-operative supplying secure, standardised messaging services and interface software to over 7 800 financial institutions in more than 200 countries. The SWIFT community includes banks, broker/dealers and investment managers, as well as their market infrastructure in payments, securities, treasury and trade. Over the past 10 years, SWIFT message prices have been reduced over 70%, and system availability approaches 5x9 reliability - 99.999% of uptime.
Sun Microsystems
A singular vision - "The Network is The Computer" - guides Sun in the development of technologies that power the world's most important markets. Sun's philosophy of sharing innovation and building communities is at the forefront of the next wave of computing: the Participation Age. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the Web at http://sun.com.
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