Post from Sibos: SWIFT Subsidiary Offers Outsourced Messaging

For those large, global banks that send and receive high volumes of SWIFT messages, the SWIFT subsidiary Arkelis (formerly a division of Sungard called Ambit) is offering new technology options. The unit, which has 60 bank customers around the world, has upgraded its basic messaging platform and renamed it AMH. According to CEO Hans Cobben, who spoke with us at Sibos today, the new platform is more scalable, resilient and scalable than the old version, Mint. It uses a distributed architecture that lets the software farm work out over a variety of hardware. The result: the new system can process 850 transactions per second, Cobben says. Fifteen banks so far are using AMH.

Brand new as of today is an outsourcing option for the messaging system, so that banks  could simply sign a service level agreement and Arkelis would take care of all messaging technology issues. "This means no more capital expense, no need to spend money on those projects," Cobben enthuses. Banks would pay for the service by volume, probably quarterly. Such a service would be likely to help improve time to market for messaging-related products and alleviate IT of a maintenance chore.