> I have no idea what's going on in the banking industry in general,; > maybe reliance on Tandem is decreasing. But I see no move at this > bank to move away from them. Our move towards higher availability > has next to nothing to do with ATM support (Tandem's forte); it is > driven by online banking support. I suspect that the ATM support > will eventually start taking more advantage of the mainframe's high > availability, but, as I said in a previous posting, the platform's > availability has little to do with the need for something like Tandem. > It's the applications; it's maintenance of the databases; etc. The > HA front ends for ATMs allow near continuous ATM availability for > customers without having to go though major costly redesigns > and reprogramming. > > Bank IT deparments are pretty conservative in general, and the > current financial environment isn't likely to inspire major changes. > I suspect you will not see many banks that currently use Tandems > stop using them because of high mainframe availability. I'd bet > more on seeing IT staffs being cut, development put on hold, and > greater dependance being put on whatever is in place right now. > > Pat O'Keefe > I currently work for a bank the uses a Tandem for wire transfer processing, not as an ATM front end. In a previous life I worked for a bank that used the Tandem for both of those functions. One thing with the ATMs is the penalties that are charged by the companies that do the interbank communications. When one of your banking customers uses their card in another bank's ATM then companies like Interlink and PLUS get involved to check their account at your bank and validate balances, etc. If you're down for even a little while and they can't make that check then you can get hit with some horrendous penalty charges. At my previous employer there was a negative file in the Tandem. If the mainframe was out of service for something like an IPL or IML, then the Tandem would check the negative file. If the account was in that it was a no go on the transaction. Otherwise there would be a set minimum amount the customer could withdraw. That way, as far as Interlink or PLUS were concerned, we were up and running.
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