The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication as begun marketing software to let banks use computers with the Unix operating system to send messages over the association's global payment network.
The Brussels-based association, also known as Swift, plans to make the first version of the software, which will run on International Business Machines Corp. RS/6000 computers, generally available in the first quarter of next year.
"The reason we're providing a Unix solution is because more and more banks are using Unix as their operating system of choice," said Douglas Jeffrey in New York, Swift's regional director for the Americas.
Swift is a nonprofit association owned by 2, 100 banks from around the world.
More than 3.700 banks, brokerage companies, exchanges, and clearing houses use the Swift network.
Largely Payment
About 70% of Swift messages are payment instructions. The rest are messages to confirm and settle trades of currencies and securities.
About a fifth of the users of the Swift network are financial institutions based in the United States.
The new Unix software is called SwiftAlliance. It manages the sending and receipt of messages on the Swift network.
Until now, the only computers that could do this chore were those that ran what are known as proprietary operating systems.
Most of the computers Swift users employ for this chore are Digital Equipment Corp. VAX computers, Mr. Jeffery said. Many banks also use computers from other vendors, including IBM.
One advantage of using the Unix operating system, is that it is a so-called open system. That means many types of computers run the operating system, which, in theory, should make it easy for these machines to communicate with each other and share software.
In reality, there are many different proprietary versions of Unix, so getting these machines to share software can be difficult.
But Mr. Jeffery said that banks and brokerage companies are now commonly using Unix computers in their trading rooms.
So using a Unix computer to communicate with Swift should make it easier to link computers in trading rooms to the Swift network.
Wayne Arden in New York, IBM's marketing manager for the securities industry, said that IBM was pleased that its RS/ 6000 computer will be the first to run SwiftAlliance.
"That endorses our product," he said.
But Mr. Jeffery said that subsequent versions of Swift-Alliance will run on Unix computers from Bull, Digital Equipment, Hewlett-packard Co., and Sun Microsystems Inc.
Mr. Jeffery said the licensing cost for SwiftAlliance software wi 11 range from $10,000 to "tens of thousands."
Mr. Arden said that the price of most RS/6000 computers ranges from $6,000 to $100,000, depending on the power of the machine.
