IBM (International Business Machine), United States (US) based technology, says it invested $1bn in the development of one of the most sophisticated computer systems ever built, delivering scale and economics together with real-time encryption and analytics.
This powerful system, according to the company, will help meet the rising consumers’ expectation for speed and safety in support of trillions of transactions consummated in the mobile economy. The z13 system culminates a $1bn investment, five years of development, exploits the innovation of more than 500 new patents and represents collaboration with more than 60 clients – underscoring IBM’s singular commitment to providing higher-value, innovative technologies to clients.
The rapid growth of mobile applications has created consumers who expect mobile transactions to be fast and seamless – regardless of which mobile payment platform, retailer, or financial organisation is providing the service. As a result, businesses are being forced to evaluate whether their IT infrastructures can support mobile applications that meet and exceed these consumer expectations – or face the potential of losing clients to competing businesses.
“Every time a consumer makes a purchase or hits refresh on a smart phone, it can create a cascade of events on the back end of the computing environment. The z13 is designed to handle billions of transactions for the mobile economy. Only the IBM mainframe can put the power of the world’s most secure data centres in the palm of your hand,” said Tom Rosamilia, senior vice president, IBM Systems.
“Consumers expect fast, easy and secure mobile transactions. The implication for business is the creation of a secure, high performance infrastructure with sophisticated analytics.”
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As mobile adoption grows, consumers are driving exponentially larger numbers of mobile transactions. Each of these mobile transactions triggers a cascade of events across computing systems. These events include comparisons to past purchases, data encryption and decryption, bank-to-bank reconciliations, and customer loyalty discounts.
This cascade of events causes a so-called “starburst effect” – where a single transaction can trigger as few as four or as many as 100 additional system interactions. Consequently, the starburst effect can create security vulnerabilities at each interaction point. In fact, 71 percent of CIOs and IT managers surveyed by IBM indicated that security is their most significant mobile enterprise challenge.
With data and transactions under constant threat from multiple points of attack, consumers want to know that their mobile transactions are as secure as financial data held by banks. When combined with IBM MobileFirst solutions, the z13 delivers enhanced performance, availability, analytics and security that will drive optimal mobile user experiences.
IBM MobileFirst Platform enables organisations to deliver better, more secure apps. IBM MobileFirst Protect delivers seamless security and end-to-end management of clients’ infrastructure and all its devices, apps, content and transactions. The z13 features the world’s fastest microprocessor, 2X faster than the most common server processors, 300 percent more memory, 100 percent more bandwidth and vector processing analytics to speed mobile transactions.
As a result, the z13 transaction engine, according to the technology company, is capable of analysing transactions in ‘real time’ and will be able to help prevent fraud as it is occurring, allowing financial institutions to halt the transaction before the consumer is impacted.
IBM has however designed the z13 to integrate real-time scoring and guarantees this capability as a feature of the system. This scoring can be used for fraud detection on 100 percent of a client’s business transactions.
