Lively discussions at the BOX User Group meeting

The first BOX for SWIFTNet user group meeting took place in Vienna from April 7 to April 8 2011 hosted by Bank Austria. 30 participants from customers in 5 countries, IBM and Intercope shared their many experiences of different BOX implementations and deployment strategies.

Manfred Bibars explained in his presentation, that Bank Austria decided to start with the new CBT and FileAct messaging interfaces of BOX because this strategy would maximise cost  savings in the short term and allow a migration of MERVA to follow in a later step.

Andreas Goerlich from s IT Solutions presented details of how various individual SWIFT systems from 24 banks in 9 countries were replaced by one BOX instance and how significant performance enhancements were requested and achieved during this complex project.

Mel Stricker outlined how the clear migration path from MERVA to BOX and the availability of the product under Linux on System z were major decision criteria for Citi and that this strategy would allow the reduction of MIP costs to 10% compared with the resource requirements of a solution under zOS Unix System Services.

Daniel Mietzschke showed how BOX could be customized to process proprietary messages with the example of Target2 related XML data specific to Deutsche Bundesbank.

In a lively discussion these implementations and further customer requirements were debated and later an evening event with summerlike temperatures in a beer garden in the Prater offered further opportunities to exchange experiences in a relaxed atmosphere with crispy “Stelzen” and excellent Czech beer.

During the second day Olaf Grossler from Intercope gave a demonstration of the BOX CBT functions and discussed customer change requests. Jens Huser from Intercope explained the current product status and further development plans and Holger Wegner outlined plans to improve customer case management through a new portal based solution.

Francesco Oliva from Unicredit was elected as chairperson of the user group and Daniel Mietzschke from Deutsche Bundesbank offered to create a Website for the user group, where you will find more information and pictures from the Vienna event in the very near future.