CINCINNATI -- Fifth Third, the country's top processor of EFT services for financial institutions worldwide, will spend $10 million to purchase three new zSeries mainframe computers with expanded disk storage and robotic and virtual tape systems from IBM.
According to Fifth Third, the mainframes will increase its processing capability by 105 percent, while the IBM Shark disk storage and virtual tape system will offer an additional 100 percent capacity.
Fifth Third was the first bank in the country to commit to IBM's Parallel enterprise server in 1995. Fifth Third made a series of upgrades in 1999 that increased its computer capacity by 60 percent.
Fifth Third processed five billion e-commerce transactions in 2000 and serves more than five million customers around the world, including Federated Department Stores, CompUSA and Kroger Co.
Fifth Third's data processing subsidiary, Midwest Payment Systems, provides EFT, credit card processing and electronic benefit transfer services and was ranked by Faulkner & Gray Network Data as the number one EFT provider in the U.S. in 2000. It is the country's fifth largest credit card processor.
"With our recent acquisitions in Michigan, Illinois and Indiana, as well as our purchase of New York-based IDTI and its Cartel ATM network and Pennsylvania processor, ACI, we'll increase our e-commerce transactions by 75 percent this year," said Barry L. Boerstler, executive vice president of Midwest Payment Systems. "These acquisitions also significantly expanded our Jeanie ATM franchise, which we established in 1976 as the country's first centrally controlled ATM network."
According to James J. Hudepohl, Fifth Third's executive vice president who leads the Bancorp's information technology force, the new hardware will give Fifth Third the ability to double its storage capabilities, growing from six trillion to 12 trillion bytes of online data and double its processing speed from 1.5 billion to three billion instructions per second.
Hudepohl said the investment will also support the deployment of 30 new software applications, including image-based check processing and enhanced fraud protection.
