Success Story

Success on Sun

" Realistically, however, I'd have chosen Sun anyway. There are only two computer system vendors with the international presence to serve a financial institution with our worldwide scope. Sun exhibits the performance, reliability, and responsiveness needed in our business."

Rabobank Securities, subsidiary of Rabobank International in the Netherlands, needed to implement a new general ledger system before the end of 1998. Not only was the advent of the euro currency looming, but the millennium change and its requirements for Y2K compliance were just one more year away. The BankAct general ledger system in place was not prepared to support either of these major transformations in the world's economic and business systems.

Taking advantage of the experiences and assistance of Rabobank International's branch in New York City, the Amsterdam based subsidiary migrated to a system based on products from Sun Microsystems, Inc., PeopleSoft Corporation, and Sybase, Inc. Conversion to the new system was accomplished in just six weeks, handsomely beating the first of its deadlines and setting a new record for PeopleSoft implementations in the Benelux countries. The system is now delivering excellent functionality and performance, and has never once failed.

Standardizing on Sun, Sybase and PeopleSoft

The Rabobank Group is one of the world's major banking institutions with over 49,000 employees worldwide. The Rabobank Group maintains a balance total of approximately $250 billion to serve the needs of its corporate, institutional investor, and high net-worth individual customers around the globe. In addition to a strong domestic presence (over 2400 branches), the Rabobank International network consists of over 110 branches in more than 40 countries. Specializing in food, agribusiness, and healthcare, Rabobank International provides a full range of corporate, investment and private banking services.

The America's headquarters for Rabobank International are in New York City, where a PeopleSoft on Sun and Sybase migration was already underway at the time Rabobank Securities finalized its plans in fall of 1998. "We were fortunate to be able to follow the example of our colleagues in New York," said Ronald Van Hees, Director of Financial Controls for the headquarters branch. "They had already made a wise choice of vendors, which we were more than pleased to select as well. Furthermore, by choosing the same basis, we were in a position to take advantage of their advice and the customization work they were doing for PeopleSoft."

"Sun was already a standard throughout the bank via a corporate purchasing agreement," Van Hees continued. "Realistically, however, I'd have chosen Sun anyway. There are only two computer system vendors with the international presence to serve a financial institution with our worldwide scope. Sun exhibits the performance, reliability, and responsiveness needed in our business."

"Our choice of PeopleSoft resulted from research the entire bank performed in early 1998," he added. "We investigated all the popular alternatives, and signed a global license agreement with PeopleSoft after we determined that their solution offers the best performance and customizability for our needs."

Experience in New York provides advice and customization model

Even though Rabobank Securities in Amsterdam began its conversion later than the New York branch, it faced a much earlier and totally inflexible deadline ö the arrival of the euro on January 1, 1999. The Amsterdam subsidiary had in place a General Ledger system from BankAct, which was not widely used and was not set up to deal with the monumental change the euro would bring about in European financial transactions. There was absolutely no choice but to implement the new system in time for production use before the end of the year.

The experiences of the sister branch in the U.S. proved invaluable, as related by Jeroen Riedstra, Technical Project Manager for the New York branch. "We too found Sun with Sybase to be the obvious basis for our PeopleSoft General Ledger system," he began. "We had a number of other Sybase on Sun systems in operation which were serving us well. Sun personnel did a very competent job sizing our PeopleSoft configuration, which consists of three Sun Enterprise 3500 servers along with Sun StorEdge A5000 disk arrays."

"We began with a demonstration environment consisting of a small PeopleSoft implementation that was set up in less than a week," Riedstra continued. "This test system constituted our framework for analysis of our backup requirements, archiving needs, fail-over plans, and so forth. It also provided an environment for customizing PeopleSoft to accommodate our specific needs. While the requirements in Amsterdam varied a little from ours, this customization is proving to be a very helpful model for their use."

Record-breaking implementation to beat the euro

In early October of 1998, the Dutch Securities subsidiary, aided by quick delivery and installation by Sun's reseller Kender-Thijsen, began implementing its new General Ledger system. Since its transaction volumes and overall complexity are much lower than New York's, the headquarters branch opted for a Sun Enterprise 450 server to host PeopleSoft. "This configuration has ample resources for our present needs and leaves us a lot of room for growth," said Van Hees.

On November 19, just six weeks after installation was begun, PeopleSoft General Ledger was up and running in production in The Netherlands. "Not only did we beat the euro," said van Hees, "but we set a record for speedy PeopleSoft implementations throughout the Benelux countries."

Four months later, Van Hees reported that the new system has been a complete success. "The system has been tremendously stable," he said. "We have never once had to issue a service call. We're seeing good performance. Response times, even to large queries, are only a few seconds. Sun and PeopleSoft personnel worked synergistically during implementation, training of our IT staff, and now in ongoing support. Since Sun did so well on that system, we've chosen the Sun Enterprise 450 workgroup server again for another project at the bank, a risk management system that's under development now."

Pilot for worldwide deployment

The New York branch, faced with a much more complex installation, has proceeded on schedule toward production implementation in May of 1999. Riedstra reports that his branch's implementation is going well, and that many other Rabobank branches are watching his progress closely.

"In Amsterdam, Sun and PeopleSoft showed what they can do quickly and well on a relatively straightforward implementation. The New York implementation is considered to be the pilot for a Rabobank International standard general ledger configuration. If we are equally successful, and I've seen no reason to believe we won't be, other offices within the Rabobank International network around the world are likely to follow our lead."

"Our system is successful in every respect ö functionality, performance, and reliability," Van Hees concluded. "We're very happy with the choices we made."