Case Study: a leading bank for private and corporate clients achieves full merger testing of 1,600 applications in 18 months with Solution-Soft Time Machine

Two Large German Banks Merge: Time Machine® Meets Challenges & Needs in Major Migration & Consolidation Project

a leading bank for private and corporate clients faced a major IT challenge after a 2009 merger: consolidate and migrate over 1,600 applications across more than ten OS versions and 1,184+ servers while testing complex date/time, time-zone and duration-triggered events. Active Directory/Kerberos constraints prevented changing system time, so the bank needed a solution that would allow “time travel” for applications without adjusting system clocks; they engaged Solution-Soft and its Time Machine product for the task.

Solution-Soft implemented Time Machine across the bank’s UNIX, Linux and Windows test platforms, adding Solaris zone RPC control and an SSH-based global time management layer to provide per-zone virtual clocks and simultaneous changes across many machines. The vendor’s solution enabled future-date testing of all core applications, streamlined testing workflows, reduced manpower and infrastructure costs, and allowed the bank to fully test 1,600 applications across ~1,184 servers and complete the migration and consolidation within the 18-month deadline.