Drives up Performance with Enterprise Grid and Improves Competitive Advantage

CUSTOMER CASE STUDY

With 59,000 employees, a market Fortis employs Sophis RISQUE capitalization of €42 billion and a for this purpose, a leading Fortis Merchant & Private global presence in 50 countries, front-to-back solution offering a wide Fortis ranks as one of the largest set of cross-asset class solutions. With Banking is a division of financial institutions in Europe. The increases in product complexity, Fortis, an international company delivers a total package of significant increases in portfolio sizes financial products and services and a desire to employ even more through its own high- performance sophisticated financial modeling provider which ranks channels and via intermediaries and techniques, the business was among Europe’s largest other partners. demanding more capacity than the financial institutions. existing calculation servers could Fortis Merchant & Private Banking provide. division has market leadership in CHALLENGE specific product and customer Scale Sophis RISQUE based niches, such as shipping, commodity “In May 2006, Fortis built up Monte-Carlo simulation and project finance and structured the Platform Computing grid. capacity dramatically while credits. It offers institutional and The grid now has 300 CPUs preserving application corporate customers tailored running Monte-Carlo simulations. compatibility and minimizing investment and financing solutions Now Fortis is planning to add technology costs to enable based on its activities in Corporate more CPUs to its grid to and , Financial continued growth of the handle operations in several business. and Capital Markets, Private Equity and Securities Services. assett classes” SOLUTION - Yves Mahieu, Fortis Merchant A 300 CPU Platform A key part of Fortis’ expansion Bank Global Markets Symphony managed grid strategy is in controlling costs and solution running C++ based risks in their business as they monte-carlo simulations sharpen their customer focus and integrated with SOPHIS ensure profitable growth. Selecting a Solution Risque. Recognizing the strategic advantage Enabling Business Growth that an enterprise grid solution BENEFIT To enable its growth strategy, Fortis offered, Fortis conducted a technical An ability to model more requires a robust risk management evaluation and a series of complex portfolios with capability to model fund performance tests between two greater speed and accuracy performance across a variety of leading Grid computing solutions. across a greater number of investment types. This is especially They ultimately chose Platform asset classes and market true in the complex area of equity Symphony as their preferred solution scenarios translating directly derivatives, where advanced based on it’s proven ability to scale into competitive advantage simulation capabilities are essential and it’s ability to easily handle for Fortis Merchant Bank. to quantifying and managing risk. multiple types of applications on the grid. Customer Case Study FORTIS MERCHANT & PRIVATE BANKING

Realizing the Rewards Using Platform Symphony with its monte-carlo calculation services for Fortis has plans to scale open and flexible set of Sophis RISQUE, Fortis Merchant Bank programming interfaces, Fortis was now has a scalable high performance up its grid computing able to enable their C++ based compute fabric that can easily be environment to support Monte-Carlo simulation code as scaled or extended to support a variety a range of financial services on the Platform grid of different applications in a cost services applications providing Sophis RISQUE users with effective manner. Furthermore, because an extremely fast and flexible Platform Symphony can tolerate the grid-based solution. Furthermore, the failure of multiple computer systems architecture can easily and keep running, the service has accommodate additional become much more reliable as well. applications that can be shared seamlessly between the various Now after their successful Sophis Fortis lines of business. deployment, Fortis is adding additional capacity to their grid to handle more Fortis are implementing their third operations in several asset classes. generation grid solution at the bank. They are also expanding their initial Since their successful deployment of SOPHIS environment to double its size.

About Fortis Fortis is an international provider of banking and services to personal, business and institutional customers. The company delivers a total package of financial products and services through its own high-performance channels and via intermediaries and other partners. Fortis’s operations are the market leader in the region – one of Europe’s wealthiest. Building on that leadership, Fortis has developed an integrated, continent-wide network to serve internationally active enterprises. The same, unique skill-set also provides high net worth individuals, enterprises and entrepreneurs with advanced financial services tailored to their specific needs. Fortis’s unmatched expertise has made it a regional and in some cases global leader in niche markets like fund administration, export and project finance, shipping and commodities. Fortis successfully combines its banking and insurance skills in growth markets in Europe and Asia, and it leads the market in bancassurance in the Iberian Peninsula. Fortis ranks among Europe’s top 20 financial institutions, with a market capitalisation of EUR 42 billion. With excellent solvency, a presence in 50 countries and a dedicated, professional workforce of 59,000, Fortis combines global strength with local flexibility.

About Platform Computing Platform Computing is the leading systems infrastructure software company that accelerates applications and delivers IT agility for increased business performance and reduced cost. Founded in 1992, Platform is a pioneer in HPC, Cluster and Grid Computing technologies. Platform has over 2000 global customers and strategic relationships with Dell, HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Red Hat and SAS, along with the industry's broadest support for third-party applications. For more information please visit www.platform.com

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