Retail and commercial banking institutions are looking at ways to reduce costs that are a bit outside of the box, from using the cloud and outsourcing both IT and operations to considering low-cost platforms that weren’t previously contemplated.

In the report, Using SQL Server at the Core, Celent examines the use of Microsoft SQL Server as a way to enhance performance and reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) in core banking. Celent examined two financial institutions that are using SQL Server to achieve equal or better performance at a reduced cost: North Shore Credit Union (NSCU) in North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and Bank SinoPac in Taipei, Taiwan.

Each institution needed to upgrade, but for different reasons. NSCU’s existing core system was being sunset by the vendor, and they wanted to move to a system which supported their present and future needs. They were presented with the choice of using a bundled database from Temenos or Microsoft’s SQL Server.

Bank SinoPac was looking for a core system to support them in Taiwan and other countries in the region, such as China. The bank was looking for a vendor who had successful implementation in the region. They then looked for a database that would support 1,100 peak transactions per second at a low TCO, honing in on Microsoft’s SQL Server as their solution of choice.

“Microsoft SQL Server has been used extensively as a database for channel layers such as branch automation, Internet banking, and mobile banking,” says Bart Narter, Senior Vice President of Celent’s Banking Group and author of the report. “Historically, it hasn’t been used as the system of record database at a bank, but this is changing.”

The case studies in this report describe the migrations and the decision process at each institution.

This 14-page report contains two figures and two tables.