Volksbank Wien, the central entity of an association of Austrian banks, and Murex have completed the migration of MX.3 from bank premises into the fully private cloud hosting Murex SaaS in a lift-and-shift project, which included an upgrade to the latest MX.3 release.

In such a project, Murex transfers the full MX.3 environment, including the database, customizations and interfaces, into the cloud hosting Murex SaaS—a move increasingly adopted by diverse clients across regions, sell-side and buy-side, to reduce their total cost of ownership, achieve quicker time to market, rationalize IT infrastructure and focus on their core business.

The project took nine months to reach User Acceptance Test readiness, with a controlled budget. The project was accomplished entirely remotely. The remote way of working for all teams required continuous information sharing and alignment during design, deployment and validation.

In essence, the Volksbank MX.3 instance is now managed by Murex. Volksbank no longer manages hosting and infrastructure services. From an end-user perspective, the switch to SaaS was seamless, and new features such as the SWIFT ISO 20022 format were delivered with the adoption of the latest release.

Murex, the global leader in trading, risk, and processing solutions for capital markets, sees the move as a key evolution for Volksbank, enabling it to divert efforts previously applied to managing MX.3 to other core bank priorities. Volksbank, a retail- and small and medium enterprise-focused bank, and Murex have a 15-year history of working together to optimize capital markets software usage.

“Adopting a ‘SaaS-first’ approach will allow Volksbank to take advantage of the MX.3 frequent innovations,” said Volksbank Program Manager Patrick Zima. “Shifting management of MX.3 to the Murex SaaS team has freed up in-house expertise and resources. This is just the latest collaborative evolution in a continuing long-term partnership with Murex.”

The project scope ranged from the MX.3 upgrade, which included using new collateral and risk management modules; to the lift-and-shift stream, which included adaptation on the global operating model and end-of-day housekeeping processes, as well as ecosystem integration and reporting adaptation with 28 interfaces and 57 extractions; to technical compliance with SaaS architecture and security principles.

“We are excited to have helped Volksbank make this jump,” said Murex Co-founder and Managing Partner Philippe Helou. “Continuous and proactive project management and close collaboration were key to our success in accomplishing this SaaS migration. It’s important to note that other Murex clients can replicate Volksbank’s success in similar migrations and can rely on an experienced Murex team to do so.”

Going forward, Volksbank aims to allow smaller banks within the association it leads to also benefit for their own treasury activities from the MX.3 platform on SaaS. Murex will provide all support required to achieve this goal.