DCI Maximizes IT Services for Banks with Vityl Software for Capacity Management

Data Center Inc. provides full-service bank technology and processing solutions for nearly 200 financial institutions nationwide. The company’s flagship product, iCore®, is a sophisticated and scalable system for the automated management and processing of banking transactions, financial data, customer account information, and more. iCore features a single relational data source that provides real-time management of all information across a bank’s entire enterprise.

Jeff White, DCI Senior Technical Services Programmer, was looking for a way to further maximize iCore system resources and responsiveness for DCI’s increasingly larger bank clients.

“Our clients should expect their nightly processing runs to be as efficient as possible — and to have iCore up and running — long before they arrive to start the next day’s business,” says White. “However, as our bank clients grow, so can nightly processing and system demands. We wanted to ensure we can maintain optimum system capacity and unparalleled uptime for our larger clients with minimal configuration changes or expense.”

He worked with the business, product support, Linux, Windows and VMS users to define the solution specifications to meet everyone’s needs; the incumbent solution had fallen behind the demands of the organization some time ago. His main priority was to find a capacity and performance reporting tool that was all-inclusive.

Having gone through the tender process and extensive evaluation and review, Vityl software for capacity management was selected. He said, “The implementation was really quick and easy. Almost within a month we had Vityl running on everything in our environment.”

Immediate Impact

At the same time, some consultants were working on a project that required system statistics. They were using a system administrator’s time to complete the work, which was time-consuming and pulled the system administrator away from his normal tasks. In a pinch, they used Vityl, and it saved them time and money. “I believe this alone saved us about £75,000,” he stated.

Within the first three months of using Vityl software for capacity management, the group saved about £400,000.

“Vityl software paid for itself within one quarter. We found a bunch of runaway tasks on different machines that were using memory and CPU, so we saved upgrading those machines by catching those runaway tasks,” he said.

A Confident IT/Business Decision

White and his team chose Vityl software, a capacity planning tool to provide accurate performance modeling and what-if predictions on the iCore system capabilities.

“We knew we could not simply relocate client processing among existing hardware as our client needs grew,” noted White. “We wanted expanded, real-time modeling capabilities to ensure we continue to make the best configuration choices.”

The Right Solution

White’s team used Vityl software to select new server equipment that would meet expanding needs without overbuying.

“Vityl helped assure that we continue to exceed our uptime thresholds and reduce processing time up to 50% or more,” said White. “Customers are very pleased with the performance of iCore, and Vityl software helps us keep it that way.”

Satisfying Needs

Validation of Vityl's value to iCore also became evident when a billion-dollar DCI customer asked White for proof that iCore could continue handling all the processing capacity they would require. As a demonstration, White used Vityl to multiply the workload on the iCore server to five times the bank’s current level. The results showed no impact on performance after quintupling the workload, conclusively proving that iCore can easily handle the processing requirements of a multi-billion-dollar institution. White also gets in-depth, real-time and historical performance analysis of iCore capabilities with Vityl software for capacity management. 

“Vityl helps us actively monitor iCore resources and operation, rule out false alarms, and make adjustments for peak performance," says White.

Overall, Fortra software helps White and his team spend their time more productively, ensuring DCI clients remain highly satisfied with their iCore service.