Headlines:
First Omaha Consolidating with IBM Servers
First National Bank of Omaha is replacing more than 600 old server computers with about 100 from International Business Machines Corp.
The move will save money and increase flexibility and security, said Kenneth J. Kucera, the head of the bank's enterprise technology services division. It will, among other things, let First National slash its team of systems engineers from 27 people to 10, said Mr. Kucera, who a senior vice president and member of the bank's board.
The project, which IBM was to announce today, began last year and is to be wrapped up in April.
The bank's parent, First National Bank of Nebraska Inc., owns multiple banks, with $13 billion of managed assets and 6.6 million customers, in five states. First National of Omaha does the processing for all of those banks.
A single top-of-the-line IBM zSeries 990 mainframe is replacing 30 Solaris servers from Sun Microsystems Inc. That will simplify security, Mr. Kucera said, because "your firewalls and your intrusion detection only have to protect one major source."
Seventy eServer BladeCenter systems from IBM will replace 560 servers that handle Web banking and office applications. The older machines, from competitors, are based on Intel Corp. processors, IBM said.
Jim Goethals, the infrastructure simplification program manager at IBM, said First National will be able to rent extra processing power - for example, to handle extra loads generated by special promotion - using the technology company's "on-demand" business model.
Mr. Kucera said he likes this arrangement. "I can turn on the processing capacity immediately to handle those workloads," he said.
Carreker Image Software for Wells Tellers
Wells Fargo & Co. of San Francisco will use Carreker Corp. software to capture check images at 3,300 branches, Carreker said Tuesday.
The software, Source Capture Branch OTC, will enable tellers to capture images of checks as soon as they are presented for deposit by customers.
"We are furthering our commitment to end-to-end image-enablement in preparation for reaping the benefits of image exchange," said Wayne Mekjian, an executive vice president at Wells, said in Carreker's press release.
Though many banks are already using image technology in their back offices, some are now trying to save time and money by converting the paper into electronic files as early in the check-handling process as possible. This would make it possible for banks to transmit the files to image exchange networks earlier, and Wells said that using the software at the teller window would enable it to make deposits available earlier and spot fraud faster. (Wells is participating in two major image exchange systems, operated by Viewpointe Archive Services LLC and the Clearing House Payments Co. LLC.)
Wells uses other Carreker software extensively in its check-imaging operations. Last August it licensed the Dallas company's products to analyze image quality and to produce substitute checks and image statements.
