Analysis of Current Solutions Sold by Certain Vendors

Each company assigned to DR Tech has a wide array of products available to develop a data center. However, none of them offer integrated all-in-one solutions one would come to expect to reduce costs. Evidently, their products are meant to integrate well with each other, but that nonetheless implies one must analyze requirements and choose components individually. In case this informations was not seen in a previous post, the three companies whose products can be used are Oracle, Brocade, and Check Point.

Oracle

Given the nature of this project, the relevant solutions are those listed under "Financial Services" in Oracle's website, and then proceeding to "Banking solutions". The resulting list is rather extensive, but it does highlight one concept: there is no single hardware + software solution offered. Indeed, the entire slew of products revolve around software. Of those, the most interesting ones appear to be an integrated banking platform aptly names "Oracle Banking Platform", and the "FLEXCUBE" array of banking solutions.

An interesting aspect of Oracle's portfolio is its generic road map to developing an optimized data center.

The link above has a couple videos which seek to emphasize the importance of efficiency, and the strong negative impact laziness and stagnation in the data processing department can have on a company. The consequences of poor management and a lack of optimization cannot be overlooked, and in that regard Oracle certainly succeeds.

Check Point

As a company with a very clear focus, Check Point offers a very specific complete data center security solution. Their catalog is divided in hardware systems and software systems.

The former are further divided by capacity, offering a 23000 model and a 41000/61000 model shown in order below.

Due to the critical nature of a financial institution and the enormous amount of traffic handled on an hourly basis, the most attractive solution seem to be the higher end products, although further exploration would be required to state such a fact.
If interested, the following link offers a very detailed side-by-side comparison of the different hardware security solutions offered at Check Point.

On the software side, the bundle offered uses two main techniques: Next Generation Threat Extraction and Next Generation Threat Prevention. Overall, the suite offers what would be expected with regards to preventing security issues: antivirus, IPS, app control, URL filtering, anti-bot, etcetera.

Brocade

Much like Check Point, this company has a very specific focus in networking. So much so that, aside from common switches, there seems to be no direct link to data center technology. That being said, there are a series of data center-specific switched aimed at offering increased flexibility and automation. Their current lineup offers both 25G and 100G leaf and spine switches (to read more on the concept of leaf and spine, stay tuned for the next post).

The networking solutions offered include Level 3 services as well in an additional line of VDX switches. These products seek to easily join classic server hardware with new generation technologies such as SDNs and high-availability solutions.

Of particular interest are a series of articles listed on the website  regarding data center network management and future trends in the area.