Euroclear consolidates securities settlement using IBM System z

Euroclear is the premier settlement-infrastructure service provider for domestic and international securities transactions, providing settlement and related securities services that involve domestic and international bonds, equities and investment funds. Serving major financial institutions in more than 80 countries and based in Brussels, the Euroclear group includes Euroclear Bank, Euroclear Belgium, Euroclear France, Euroclear Nederland and CRESTCo (covering the U.K. and Ireland).

The total value of securities transactions settled by the Euroclear group is in excess of €450 trillion a year, while assets held for clients are valued at more than €18 trillion.
In several phases during 2006 and early 2007, Euroclear launched its Single Settlement Engine (SSE), the foundation onto which all transaction-processing platforms in the Euroclear group will be consolidated. The SSE performs the core functions of positioning and booking cash and securities transfers. It has increased settlement efficiency for Euroclear’s clients and has reduced the need for securities borrowings to avoid settlement failures.
IBM mainframe dependability
User-owned and user-governed, Euroclear is working very closely with the private and public sectors to reduce the cost of cross-border securities transactions in Europe through market-practice harmonization and settlement-infrastructure consolidation. These strategic initiatives are driving Euroclear’s program of platform consolidation on IBM System z mainframe servers for all business-critical applications, including the SSE. Euroclear is becoming one of the fastest growing System z clients in Belgium.
Resilience and high availability
As the most robust mainframe platform on the market, System z delivers resilience and high availability. System z is designed for up to 99.999% availability with Parallel Sysplex® clustering and enables several IBM z/OS® systems to behave as a single, logical computing facility for continuous availability, high performance and no single points of failure. Especially valuable for Euroclear, System z provides 64 partitions, a feature important for the extensive testing needed to improve risk-mitigation and meet the demands of multiple markets.
In 2006, the number of netted transactions settled in the Euroclear group increased by 14% over the previous year to 145 million. As settlement volumes processed by Euroclear continue to increase, the company depends on System z to handle future growth securely, efficiently and cost-effectively.
Security
System z is also an extremely secure platform. This is partly due to IBM’s award-winning Resource Access Control Facility (RACF) that protects vital system resources and controls access.
Dependability
As for stability, the proof is in the facts. System z is designed to deliver application availability up to 99.999% which equates to approximately 5 minutes of downtime in a year on an average. A mainframe averages decades between server outages. These are compelling examples of how large enterprises depend on IBM mainframe technology.