SunTrust Bank has gone live with ACI Communication Services for Advanced Networking. The system is intended to bring its ATM network into alignment with SunTrust's primary communication infrastructure and help its ATM processing environment manage growing transaction volumes.

SunTrust currently runs ACI BASE24 on HP NonStop servers, interfacing to IBM System z host applications. In conjunction with a server upgrade from HP NonStop K-Series to HP Integrity servers, the bank deployed the ACI platform. The plan was to simplify its network configuration by eliminating the separate SNI network; bring the ATM transaction traffic into its primary TCPIP network and improve network throughput, availability and reliability.

 James Bone, SunTrust VP of EDS ATM Development, said: "Having worked with ACI for a number of years, and also having run previous similar projects, it was the obvious choice for us to come to ACI for help with this. The consolidation of servers and increased transaction volumes within the enterprise required highly-available, extremely fast connectivity. With ACI's HPR/IP solution and IBM's System z Enterprise Extender we exceeded throughput requirements while reducing both response time and demand on system resources. In addition, with ACI's HPR/IP solution, we eliminated the IBM 3745 Communications Controller with no application code changes."