Westpac moves data management off the mainframe

Westpac is moving master data management (MDM) off its mainframe as it establishes an Oracle suite as the single source of truth for all its retail banking customer data.

The bank today revealed plans to run its MDM application, Siebel Universal Customer Master, on the x86 64-bit Exalogic Elastic Cloud and Exadata Database Machine.

The systems were preassembled by Oracle, with Westpac expecting to complete installation "in a matter of weeks, rather than months".

Westpac did not reveal the cost of the Oracle deployment, but said it expected to realise significant cost savings over the next year, based on proof-of-concept performance tests.

It said benchmark testing showed the Oracle solution capable of up to 10,000 transactions per second with a response time of 29 milliseconds — a forty-fold improvement over Westpac's existing mainframe infrastructure.

Westpac hoped the new MDM suite would provide a single view of customer information, allowing it to aggregate, manage and capture customer data, have richer customer profiles and to have better enforcement of compliance and risk policies.

The buy had the bank join a growing list of Exadata database machine customers in Australia, which also includes rival CBA, electrical products distributor Rexel Australia, the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC), and oil & gas firm Santos.