Marathon Runs with NT-Server Safety Net

What keeps online brokerage executives from sleeping at night? Fear of systems outages, according to a recent survey by Deloitte & Touche LLP. To ensure continuous uptime, two financial services companies, Onecore and Southwest Securities, have run Marathon Technologies' Endurance for Web site NT servers to safeguard business-critical applications.

Both Onecore, an online financial services provider for small businesses, and Southwest, the Chicago-based brokerage firm, depend on continuous access to bill payment 401k plans, payroll as well as trades 24 hours, seven days a week.

Onecore purchased Endurance last March and is currently in a quiet period. Southwest was unavailable to comment on the potential marketing initiative. Currently Onecore wraps its 401k plans, credit lines, merchant services a.k.a. credit card processing, loans and equipment leasing in the service. Southwest shields its e-mail, workflow forms, processing and clearing functions, and task and contact lists with Endurance.

"It's essential that transactions are completed in a timely manner, without a breakdown in communication," said Craig John Anderson, director of marketing and strategic alliances for Marathon. "Otherwise, you expose yourself to liability," he warns.

Marathon provides a disaster-tolerant net in the shape of four installable software cards that when booted up secure several servers that can operate as far apart as a mile and a half. In this way, the company guards against fire and flood damage-if one server goes down three are still running. The cost for full-package integration is $33,500.

Besides keeping their sites up and running all of the time, another reason why Onecore and Southwest licensed Endurance is that the data generated and maintained is protected from corruption.

"Onecore is a virtual bank," adds Anderson. "You don't want to tick off a customer or disrupt service with inaccurate, mixed-up information and account scrambling. Our service presents information face out to the world across the Internet without systems going down and coming up with faulty information."

Research analysts at Southwest also use the system to distribute stock research material, according to the statement announcing the deal with Marathon. "We would lose some serious money if they couldn't communicate. For example, there might be an important piece of news that affects a stock and losing even a few minutes of time could be a major problem, says Patrick Bouldin, Southwest's vice president and director of information technology.

In past statements, both companies said the Endurance product was transparent to clients and provided absolutely no downtime with no time-consuming application scripts to adjust. "The lights can go out," said Anderson. "But the phones still work."