ABN AMRO Clearing is a global leader in financial clearing and integrated post-trade solutions, with operations in 11 countries and connectivity to over 160 global trading venues. The company processes more than 20 million trades daily and serves a diverse client base, including Principal Trading Groups, Institutional Brokers, Hedge Funds, and commodity-related Corporations. Known for its robust risk models, operational excellence, and innovative offerings such as Banking as a Service and Retail One Stop Shop, ABN AMRO Clearing consistently ranks among the top three global clearing firms on key derivatives exchanges.

The Challenge

As transaction volumes increased dramatically over the years, from approximately 1.2 million transactions per hour in 2010 to nearly 2.6 million per hour by 2021, concerns grew within the organization about the ability of existing systems to handle the load. System Architect Harry Gobits and Product Owner for Core Clearing Services Harrie Wolf were particularly concerned that the current IBM Power System model HEX-EDP2 would not scale effectively to meet future demands.

In response, the team explored several approaches. One was to migrate transaction processing to alternate platforms such as Open Swift or Microsoft Cluster. Although this seemed theoretically viable, practical tests revealed serious drawbacks, including reduced performance due to protocol interfacing overhead and inefficiencies in ASCII data conversion.

A second option involved upgrading the IBM Power hardware. While this provided a temporary boost, it was quickly deemed unsustainable. Repeated hardware scaling to keep pace with transaction growth was neither cost-effective nor technically viable over the long term.

"Transaction volumes rose from 1.2 million to 2.6 million per hour - creating an urgent need for a scalable IBM i solution capable of handling future growth."

The Breakthrough with Sitemule Enterprise

The turning point came when the team was introduced to Sitemule Enterprise. This solution was uniquely capable of working directly with the IBM i’s ILE (Integrated Language Environment) architecture. It offered advanced job optimization and load balancing capabilities that could unlock far greater performance from the existing system.

By launching 100 processing jobs within Sitemule Enterprise and using multithreading to amplify each job’s capacity by a factor of 200, the bank was effectively able to simulate the work power of 20,000 concurrent jobs. This allowed the system to scale to a peak capacity of 260 million transactions per hour - an exponential increase from its previous limit.

Crucially, this transformation was achieved in just a few days. The existing legacy applications were reused without modification, thanks to the native support for ILE. There was no need for reengineering, code migration, or significant system changes. If future demand increases, additional jobs can be spun up easily, without causing a proportional impact on performance or stability.

"By launching 100 processing jobs and applying multithreading within Sitemule Enterprise, the system reached a capacity of 260 million transactions per hour - without code changes or downtime."

Business Impact

The implementation of Sitemule Enterprise delivered immediate and significant benefits. ABN AMRO Clearing gained a future-proof, scalable platform capable of supporting its evolving business without compromising performance or reliability. The IT team now has the flexibility to respond to increasing demands quickly and efficiently, while retaining the core strengths of their IBM i infrastructure.

By leveraging Sitemule Enterprise, ABN AMRO Clearing eliminated the need for costly hardware upgrades and avoided the risks associated with migrating critical functions to new, unproven platforms. The organization preserved the stability of its transaction systems while dramatically expanding its capability - achieving both innovation and continuity.

Conclusion

ABN AMRO Clearing’s successful deployment of Sitemule Enterprise demonstrates how high-performance, scalable transaction processing can be achieved within existing IBM i environments. Through intelligent job optimization and the full utilization of ILE architecture, Sitemule Enterprise enabled a world-class financial institution to overcome a critical performance ceiling and secure its operational future. This case highlights the strategic value of Sitemule Enterprise for any enterprise managing high-throughput workloads on IBM i, providing a powerful combination of scalability, efficiency, and reliability.