The FINANCIAL — Hitachi, Ltd. on February 9 announced that it provides its private cloud service for Mizuho Bank, Ltd. on a pay-per-use basis as a platform for the next-generation core banking systems.
Hitachi’s service enables customers to use IT resources, such as servers and storage on-demand and on time. It ensures that Mizuho Bank can flexibly use IT resources that deliver the performance, capacity and quality required for complex and large-scale core banking systems. As a result, Mizuho Bank will be able to optimize costs while reducing the workload related to the operation and management, according to Hitachi.
In addition to the next-generation core banking systems under development, Mizuho Bank plans to use the service for the comprehensive fund transfer system scheduled to be launched in fiscal 2016.
Mizuho Bank is currently working to develop the next-generation core banking systems in Japan. Core banking systems are large-scale system to handle the core business operations of a bank, including deposits, foreign exchanges and loans. Therefore, Mizuho Bank not only requires high-capacity and high-quality IT resources, but also needs a solution that can reduce system construction and operation costs.
Hitachi installed its own servers and storage systems in a Mizuho Bank’s data center, and will offer services ranging from the construction of the hardware environment to the operation management and maintenance. Charges for this service are based on the actual level of usage of the IT resources. Using this service, Mizuho Bank can flexibly use high-quality IT resources according to the progress of its system development and the status of its business operations, without owing the IT resources as assets. In addition, the bank can optimize costs and reduce the operation and maintenance workload for all aspects of its hardware environment, from development to maintenance.
For example, IT resources can be scaled to the optimal size according to the forecast usage amount based on the system building plan. If there is a short-term need for a large amount of IT resources, Mizuho can immediately expand the system capacity without introducing new hardware. In addition, it is easy to reduce capacity and thereby optimize costs if some of the resources become unnecessary, because the bank does not own the IT resources as assets.
Hitachi will continue to take advantage of the expertise fostered over many years including this service, in order to provide a comprehensive range of system solutions, so that it can flexibly support and respond to the financial institutions’ needs such as service quality upgrade and business efficiency improvement.
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