Kabu.com Securities, one of Japan`s top 10 online trading firms, has installed a 32-processor Unisys Enterprise Server ES7000 to host key customer and financial data. This will help it to document and record the trading activity of its rapidly expanding customer base.
Calling on the ES7000 server to manage day-to-day trading information, kabu.com will populate its database with a steady stream of market and investor updates. The ES7000 server will power kabu.com`s central account management database, tracking, processing and storing critical trading and balance information for more than 70 000 registered users. Providing continuous and seamless access to this database, the ES7000 will enable investors using the kabu.com service to research stock quotes, investor information and financial positions before placing daily trade orders.
Launched as a stocks and bonds specialty company less than two years ago, kabu.com Securities offers around-the-clock trading services to securities traders through various access methods, including the Internet, telephone, PC and television. As a result of its recent merger with Nihon On-Line Securities and e-Wing Securities, kabu.com has doubled its customer base and quadrupled its sales volume.
Every day, kabu.com handles an average of 600 trades per minute. To organise and track these transactions, the company required a high-bandwidth, large-capacity platform to capture and store its voluminous data.
"We immediately felt the impact of our merger when we encountered the overwhelming influx of trade orders from our expanded pool of customers," says Masakatsu Saito, corporate officer, application development at kabu.com. "On the sixth day after the merger, the number of users accessing and logging on to our Web site increased tenfold. When we exceeded our transaction limit level and were forced to shoulder customer complaints, we knew that only a highly available, large I/O capacity solution such as the ES7000 server could allow us to absorb the increase in traffic and continue trading."
During testing, the ES7000 server was able to satisfy kabu.com`s intensive transaction processing requirements, while using only 40% of the server`s capacity. Kabu.com`s 32-processor Unisys ES7000 will run Windows 2000 Datacenter Server and Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition, and clustered with Microsoft Cluster Server, on each of its 16-processor partitions. One partition will host customer profile information and the other will manage financial transaction data.
"The ES7000 server will help kabu.com meet the ultimate business goals of its customers, which are to sell and trade stock efficiently," said Peter Samson, VP and GM, Technology Sales Development at Unisys. "After a heavy day of trading, kabu.com now will be able to input and analyse large amounts of customer and financial data with ease, thanks to the superior system manageability and power of the ES7000 server."
The Unisys ES7000 is based on the Unisys Cellular MultiProcessing (CMP) server architecture, which provides an array of computing capabilities required for enterprise-class e-business computing - capabilities well known to users of large-scale computers, but unprecedented in computing environments using Microsoft and Intel technology.
"The power of the ES7000 makes it ideal for large-scale transaction processing environments," says Andre Purchase, strategic marketing programmes manager, systems and technology at Unisys Africa. "In SA we are experiencing strong demand from customers with similar demands and insights."
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