Financial transactions firm Nexxar was facing integration issues that anyone navigating a recent merger or acquisition knows all too well. And the company has been on a tear, snapping up high-transaction financial services providers, that while not quite the Citibanks and JP Morgans of the world, they are nonetheless proving to be lucrative for the […]
Financial transactions firm Nexxar was facing integration issues that anyone navigating a recent merger or acquisition knows all too well.
And the company has been on a tear, snapping up high-transaction financial services providers, that while not quite the Citibanks and JP Morgans of the world, they are nonetheless proving to be lucrative for the firm. Of course, that all hinges on being able to fold all of their inner workings onto a centralized platform.
Headquartered in Paramus, NJ, with a senior management base in Belgium, Nexxar Group handles transactions for banks and financial firms that do business across borders. Additionally, the firm provides money transfer services, as well as money orders, check cashing and bill payment. This segment of the financial services spectrum is dominated by Western Union and the US Post Office with thousands of small, independent businesses picking up the slack.
It’s these businesses that Nexxar has been acquiring and rolling into their portfolio to offer as private label offerings. But that poses a challenge.
How do they fold this jumble of platforms into the core business? Nexxar Group, Managing Director and CIO, Wim De Ridder says his IT strategy is now anchored by a mainframe.
“All those companies need to be integrated on one platform,” says de Ridder, adding that his company required “rich functionality on the platform side.” To accomplish this, Nexxar invested in an IBM system z9 Business Class system.
Aimed at businesses with growing or mid-range processing requirements, z890’s successor, System z9 Business Class is available in 2 flavors, the R07 and S07, both offering seven main processors (Nexxar’s houses six). Specs here, but in short, the S07 offers a bump in I/O and capacity, plus it offers a cleaner upgrade path to its big brother, the z9 Enterprise Class. z9 systems start at “around” $100,000.
As a “processor for other companies,” his customers have stringent performance and security needs, says de Ridder. And time, as always, is a factor.
z9 makes it a snap, according to the firm. Instead of the weeks it takes for most integration projects, de Ridder’s team can speed the process while maintaining data integrity by “creating a logical partition, establish role based security and segment their data in a matter of days.” Nexxar’s system primarily runs Websphere and Linux.
But virtualization is only part of the reason why Nexxar went with the z9. Capacity planning and disaster recovery also played a major role.
Describing the “business of money transfers as seasonally driven,” Nexxar was wary of pouring money into a system that would only run at full tilt when activity spiked but run relatively underused during lulls. While the co-processors are physically installed, Nexxar only pays for the added capacity it uses during predictably busy periods, such as the holidays, and then dials it back down when things level off with a simple call to IBM under its Capacity on Demand program.
The system, for its part, streamlines management automatically. “The z9 balances the capacity, including processes running and guest servers in the Linux environments,” says de Ridder.
“One of the other reasons we went with the z is the simplification of disaster recovery,” adds de Ridder. IBM offered the firm a service that was hard for the growing yet budget-conscious firm to resist. Instead of purchasing another z9 as a backup, and hence doubling their costs, IBM hosts a backup at one of their sites. Should trouble befall Nexxar’s data center, IBM takes it upon itself to keep the business up and running until things return to normal.
Hoping to dispel the notion that mainframes are only for mega-corporations or cutting-edge science, IBM is making its case to businesses weaned on commodity hardware. Nexxar, for instance, is on track to save 30 percent a year in management and operational costs by investing in a System z9.
For Nexxar, at least, that’s 30 percent they can put back into their business.
This article was first published on InternetNews.com.
Ethics and Artificial Intelligence: Driving Greater Equality
FEATURE | By James Maguire,
December 16, 2020
AI vs. Machine Learning vs. Deep Learning
FEATURE | By Cynthia Harvey,
December 11, 2020
Huawei’s AI Update: Things Are Moving Faster Than We Think
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
December 04, 2020
Keeping Machine Learning Algorithms Honest in the ‘Ethics-First’ Era
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
November 18, 2020
Key Trends in Chatbots and RPA
FEATURE | By Guest Author,
November 10, 2020
FEATURE | By Samuel Greengard,
November 05, 2020
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
November 02, 2020
How Intel’s Work With Autonomous Cars Could Redefine General Purpose AI
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
October 29, 2020
Dell Technologies World: Weaving Together Human And Machine Interaction For AI And Robotics
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
October 23, 2020
The Super Moderator, or How IBM Project Debater Could Save Social Media
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
October 16, 2020
FEATURE | By Cynthia Harvey,
October 07, 2020
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
October 05, 2020
CIOs Discuss the Promise of AI and Data Science
FEATURE | By Guest Author,
September 25, 2020
Microsoft Is Building An AI Product That Could Predict The Future
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
September 25, 2020
Top 10 Machine Learning Companies 2021
FEATURE | By Cynthia Harvey,
September 22, 2020
NVIDIA and ARM: Massively Changing The AI Landscape
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
September 18, 2020
Continuous Intelligence: Expert Discussion [Video and Podcast]
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By James Maguire,
September 14, 2020
Artificial Intelligence: Governance and Ethics [Video]
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By James Maguire,
September 13, 2020
IBM Watson At The US Open: Showcasing The Power Of A Mature Enterprise-Class AI
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
September 11, 2020
Artificial Intelligence: Perception vs. Reality
FEATURE | By James Maguire,
September 09, 2020
Pedro Hernandez is a contributor to Datamation, eWEEK, and the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals. Previously, he served as a managing editor for the Internet.com network of IT-related websites and as the Green IT curator for GigaOM Pro.
Datamation is the leading industry resource for B2B data professionals and technology buyers. Datamation's focus is on providing insight into the latest trends and innovation in AI, data security, big data, and more, along with in-depth product recommendations and comparisons. More than 1.7M users gain insight and guidance from Datamation every year.
Property of TechnologyAdvice. © 2025 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved
Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.
