Credit du Maroc Chooses Sun for Retail Bank Automation; US$5 Million Deal Will Automate All Bank Retail Technology on Sun SPARC Solaris Platform

Business Wire, Oct 23, 1995

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 23, 1995--Credit du Maroc, the third largest private bank in Morocco, has chosen SPARC network computing systems from Sun Microsystems Computer Company running the Solaris operating environment as the single technology platform to replace all of the bank's existing computer systems and to automate remaining manual processes across the company.

The deal is estimated to be valued at more than US$5 million over the next two years and is currently in a pilot phase of development. Morocco is currently facing a huge population growth. To cope with this, The World Bank is requiring the country to relax control of foreign currency exchange and allow international competitors into the country. This will greatly increase competition and accelerate change in the banking industry.

"Morocco is still in the early development phase of its financial services technology infrastructure," said Rahhou Ahmed, vice president of organization and administration at Credit du Maroc. "We aim to lead the way by creating the most advanced retail banking network, based on open systems."

"This is a total re-engineering project," he added, "and we chose the Sun solution to help us increase productivity, reduce costs and to more completely computerize the bank. Plus, Sun's platform will scale with us in the future and allow us to realize the potential of using multimedia when we're ready."

The bank has purchased more than 700 SPARCstation 5 systems as workstations, 150 SPARCstation 5 and 20 systems as branch servers and two SPARCserver 1000 systems as gateway servers to provide temporary communication links between the TCP/IP and existing Bull and Unisys CTOS legacy systems.

The Sun systems are running the Oracle relational database management system. Microsoft Office will be integrated into the UNIX environment utilizing more than 150 Sun SPARC laser printers.

SOPRA, a specialized systems integrator based in France will integrate the new Sun solution with existing legacy retail systems in a project that is expected to last through 1997.

The Tuxedo transaction management software from Amdahl will be used for on-line transaction processing and all retail banking transactions throughout the company will run on the Sun network, such as commercial and personal loans, check imaging, credit authorization.

All branches will also use an enterprise information (EIS) system, created using the Forte object-oriented 4GL, for decision support such as loan simulations and what-if scenarios, for customer service and cross-selling products and services to customers.

"We wanted to leverage off-the-shelf packages wherever possible," added Rahhou Ahmed, "and the Forte 4GL was the best UNIX solution." Forte 4GL will also be used to adapt the existing applications to the specialized requirements of the Moroccan banking industry.

Rob Theis, corporate director for financial services at Sun commented, "This demonstrates the success we've had in banking in the emerging markets, based on the scalability, quality and cost-effectiveness of the Sun platform."

With more than 4,000 employees and 150 branches across Morocco, Credit du Maroc has some of the best profitability ratios in the banking industry in that country with banking activity in excess of $1 billion. It is in part owned by the Credit Lyonnais, one of the largest French banks.

Sun is the number-one supplier of UNIX computers in the financial services market. Sun leads the worldwide workstation/server UNIX market in financial services, with 55 percent in trading systems (IDC), 41 percent in securities, (CI/InfoCorp) and 25 percent in banking systems (CI/InfoCorp). Sun Microsystems Computer Company is a world leader in the design, manufacture and sale of network computing systems and is a division of Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Recognized for quality and innovation, the company's SPARC workstations and multiprocessing servers each hold the No. 1 UNIX marketshare position. These systems are used primarily by businesses, educational institutions and governments worldwide for technical, commercial, industrial, and software development applications. -0-

Note to Editors: Sun, the Sun logo, Sun Microsystems, Sun Microsystems Computer Company and Solaris are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All SPARC trademarks are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based on an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc. UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries, exclusively licensed through X/Open Company, Ltd.

Press announcements and other information about Sun Microsystems are available on the Internet via the World Wide Web using a tool such as Netscape or NCSA Mosaic. Type http://www.sun.com at the URL prompt.

CONTACT: Sun Microsystems Computer Company

Jeremy Barnish, 415/786-8021