UK-based LINK processes over two billion ATM transactions per year (2003: 2.25 billion) for the UK's largest financial institutions and independent ATM operators. In addition to providing ATM transaction switching and settlement to its network members, LINK provides ATM management and card services via ATMOS – its ATM outsource service.

Developed by Sydney-based Integrated Research (IR), PROGNOSIS manages the business-critical systems for many of the world's largest banks, financial institutions, healthcare providers, telcos and retailers.

"As part of a value-added service improvement project for ATMOS, including a customer-facing extranet, we wanted a software solution that would allow us to monitor - and selectively publish via a secure connection - overall and per-customer ATM transaction levels," says LINK’s head of service delivery, Alan Gilmour.

"PROGNOSIS lets us publish any of its information screens to our extranet, so customers can securely access their own accounts and track the performance of their ATM networks in real-time, even drill-down to the various components that make up their service."

PROGNOSIS gives LINK a geographical view of ATM states to diagnose faults and monitor the health of the network. "We can then analyse different aspects of the network to determine, for instance, cash-out for specific ATMs, or to drill-down and resolve system problems before they can affect the customer," says Gilmour.

"The combination of PROGNOSIS and other management initiatives provides a more proactive service to our customers. It will also give our administrators more accurate and timely statistics to work with, assisting in other areas such as capacity planning for multiple systems."

Gilmour says IR’s understanding of the LINK environment, and its expertise in managing BASE24 and HP NonStop servers, gave LINK confidence in the PROGNOSIS solution.

"IR set up a custom demonstration and product trial which clearly showed us the benefits of using PROGNOSIS on our systems," he adds. "After that it was just a matter of specifying the configuration on our S74010 servers, which collectively manage over 10,000 linked ATM points."

PROGNOSIS is currently in the final stages of deployment at LINK, with a full operational rollout scheduled this month.