Successful system replacement in less than a year!

A genuine mammoth project! For a major German bank, we replaced a 30-year-old legacy system for securities processing with a new Calypso V17 instance.  The project team consisted of Gordan Radtke, Swati Buderbach, Stefan Meiss, Fabian Michels, Yannis Villbrandt, Bekir Yalcin, Joan Roig Segura and Shivani Khatter.

What was the project about and what role did firstwaters play in it?

The modernization of the technical infrastructure and the systems for handling securities trading and settlement processes is a burning issue for many financial institutions. In this specific project, our customer decided to introduce a new Calypso V17 instance to replace an old securities settlement system.

firstwaters took on the responsibility for the implementation side, which, in addition to the classic topics such as requirements analysis, translation into Calypso solutions, configuration and implementation, also included supporting the customer with questions regarding the technical infrastructure.

For the use of possible cloud and open source solutions, we analyzed the target setup of the Calypso V17 instance together with the customer for the use of OpenShift and PostgreSQL. In this way, we wanted to find out if and how such an architecture could be integrated and maintained in the bank and whether performance requirements could also be met.
 

Which factors were important for the successful completion of the project?

As with any introduction of standard software, this project also required a constant balancing of standard solutions and customizing. The challenge here is to implement the varioues requirements in a user-friendly way without blowing up the schedule and the budget due to complex customizing solutions.

In our powerful team, we combine IT architecture and Calypso know-how (technical and functional) with strong business analysis skills and many years of project experience. Particularly important to consider: Processes, organization and IT infrastructure can differ greatly from customer to customer!

The successful go-live was only possible due to a very cooperative and trustful collaboration with the customer project team. Everyone pulled together to meet the ambitious project timeframe of well under a year. We are very proud that we were able to contribute to this success with our expertise.

What lessons can we learn from this project?

The software was introduced as a kind of kick-and-rush. With the first environment in place, we began to fine-tune the software's functionalities in detail against the securities processes that needed to be mapped - and to implement them iteratively.

This approach enabled us to gradually gain a good picture of which standard functions proved successful and where individual adjustments were necessary.

With regard to the use of PostgreSQL, we have not noticed any problems with performance or robustness of the installation, even after the Go-Live. On the contrary, the customer is benefiting not only from the uncomplicated licensing arrangements, but also from the cost-effectiveness and ease of installation.