IBM z/OS high performance, reliability and availability are the perfect ingredients to seamlessly develop and deliver the highly specialised industry-specific features of K4F – Keystone for Finance, the end-to-end vertical solution for all Banks & Fintechs operating in Factoring and Commercial Finance.
IBM z/OS secure, scalable and resilient architecture is the perfect choice to take advantage of the hybrid cloud benefits: z/OS rapid elasticity allows our customers to dynamically modulate the allocation of computing resources based on the real time-dependant requirements, adopting a just-in-time approach, ensuring cost saving and always-on performance.
IBM z/OS container-based approach to Linux is also a plus, offering to LUTECH a full-stack compatibility platform to deliver also non-Z/OS components, yet integrated within a unified management console approach.
IBM's approach is to unleash the rich application development talent that clients possess by enabling new application development processes and optimizing their existing application investment in new and innovative ways, while providing the application-level resiliency and security that clients have come to expect from IBM Z®.
Business success will be predicated on embracing agility, optimization, and resiliency:
- Agility in the adoption of new technologies in DevOps, microservices, and consumption models that are delivered as a service to accelerate their time to value
- Optimization through the ability to run computing workloads in the most efficient environment
- Resiliency to deliver continuity of business services through exploitation of attributes such as encryption and high availability
These factors provide the ability to deliver results on demand and without interruption, which is critical to creating and maintaining a highly satisfying client experience.
Z/OS is designed to keep applications and data available, system resources secure, high server utilization, and agile programming environments. Maintains compatibility with existing applications and Linux runs on IBM Z containers on premise and in hybrid multicloud environments.
The new IBM® z / OS® simplifies application development and modernizes the user experience.
IBM z / OS provides a secure, scalable and resilient infrastructure.
A better hybrid cloud
IBM z / OS brings business capabilities to the hybrid cloud, providing agility and reliability.
Continuous distribution
New features are available quarterly with no impact on stability, complexity or cost.
UniCredit is a pan-European commercial bank with a single network in Italy, Germany, Central and Eastern Europe and a Corporate & Investment Banking present in all geographical areas of the Group. UniCredit Factoring is the UniCredit Group company specialized in offering factoring products and services. Present on the market for over 40 years, UniCredit Factoring is one of the companies that has most influenced the development and diffusion of factoring in Italy. With a turnover of over 52 billion euros in 2020 UniCredit Factoring is today the first company in the factoring market in Italy.
Unicredit Factoring business challenges: Unicredit Factoring needed for an higher level of process automation front to back and overall a review of the operating model. It was suffering a lack of customer front end digital offering preventing penetration of new client segments and overall business growth. So it was looking for a new platform to support current and future business volumes with high operational risk mitigated. A big bid was opened to the market and Arcares won against a British Oracle-based platform.
Arcares K4F 3.0 is the new Arcares IBM Z based Platform based on two pillars:
• New Customer Front End (WOF: Web Online Factoring)
• Core-system upgrade (Internal Front End and Back End IBM Z series based)
New K4F 3.0 platform is a key enabler to support business growth and new client segment acquisition (SMEs) with following benefits:
• Automation and digitalization of front end with enhancement of customer experience
• Focus on new client segment acquisition (SME)
• Reduction of operational risks due to migration of most of manual activities to automated tasks
• Platform scalability to improve volumes management and improve time to market
• Technological refresh of current obsolete factoring core-system
The whole solution is technologically based on the solid, scalable and resilient architecture of IBM Z solutions, with the aim of progressively acquiring the advantages of hybrid-cloud based solutions, modulating the dynamic allocation of computational resources with a just-in-time approach, ensuring cost savings and performance improvements. Also enterprise AI applications run on IBM Z because it is the best platform for I/O intensive and for high-performant access to storage and databases. AI applications can take advantage of other IBM Z features including secure data in transit, at rest, and in use with confidential computing.
“The trends in the Factoring and Supply Chain Finance market require innovative end-to-end digital solutions – says Willy Burkhardt, Financial Services Products Director of Lutech Group and Arcares CEO – that allow semi-automatic credit assignment, including products such as Reverse and Confirming to support Supply Chain and which enable risk monitoring based on sophisticated historical and predictive analysis. For this reason, no longer monolithic solutions are needed, but ecosystems for the Big Buyers/Debtors that integrate market tools in various areas, from rating and scoring to AI-based predictive algorithms".