Platform Computing, the global leader in distributed and grid computing solutions, has won the “ROI (Return on Investment) of the Year” award at this year's prestigious The Banker Technology Awards held at the Café Royal, London. Platform's entry stood out due to the staggering savings its grid computing solution, Platform Symphony, achieved for one of the world's leading investment banks, JPMorgan Chase (JPMC), when it decided to implement a grid strategy to improve commodity pricing.
Platform Symphony accelerated server utilization for JPMorgan by over 60 percent and reduced the compute-cycle costs by 20 percent, saving one million dollars. Such simple, straightforward quantification of return on investment impressed the eminent judging panel, including luminaries from international banks and analyst houses.
JPMorgan planned to implement a grid computing solution in order to speed up calculation times to provide more accurate and timely commodity pricing advice to its clients, thereby retaining its competitive edge. JPMorgan has also introduced the concept of “disposable computing” whereby the compute backbone runs on inexpensive, simple servers rather than complex, multi-processor based servers. If hardware fails, JPMorgan simply replaces it, instead of needing to devote expensive labour resources to diagnosing these problems. This ultimately reduced the total cost of ownership.
"It is an honour to win this prestigious award as part of The Banker Technology Awards,” said Songnian Zhou, CEO and co-founder of Platform Computing. “Achieving the levels of ROI available with Platform’s grid computing products is a critical component in helping banks provide clearer real-time risk assessment in line with their business and IT strategies. The result is increased competitive advantage through faster and more accurate calculation data, while achieving staggering ROI results."
The Banker Technology Awards, now in its third year, recognizes innovation and excellence within the technology industry. The awards are to highlight those vendors and banks who have contributed to advancing shareholder value and customer service, as well as providing a guide for financial services professionals on the leading solutions and “best practices” in the market.
Dan Barnes, Financial Systems Editor, The Banker, said, "Return on investment is often difficult to measure for technologies, but the straightforwardness of Platform Computing’s story for the Platform Symphony product made it a perfect fit for this award. By providing an ability to reserve resources, Platform has managed to bridge an issue that often inhibits centralisation of assets, namely that of ‘server hugging’ where managers try to retain hardware as support."