A new integrated approach to corporate electronic banking, the CMX2000, has been launched by Atlanta, Georgia-based National Data Corp Inc in association with Tandem Computers Inc. National Data hopes to corner a niche in the banking market by offering an in-bank system, hardware and worldwide networking in one package. A cash management system, it is aimed at both large international banks and medium sized second tier banks in Europe, that is those banks wanting to provide time-critical services to between five and 500 corporate customers. CMX2000 consists of several elements: the Networks for Electronic Transaction Services 2000 – NETS2000 – an in-bank services system providing electronic distributed cash management information processing on a global level, enabling banks to deliver services direct to corporate clients at a lower cost while providing the bank with central control over administration, customer support services and security controls; it can also be adapted to suit the bank’s image and information can be translated into the most suitable language for the bank’s clients; the personal computer NETS – in the form of customer site software that provides a modern interface to the banks services; the Tandem NonStop CLX/R EISC-based fault-tolerant computer, and finally automatic membership of the Cash Management Exhange – CMX – a worldwide association of 140 banks, providing international and domestic multibank balance reporting, the transmission of money transfer instructions and delivery of electronic mail to CMX member banks. The CMX2000 system can offer 25 concurrent users a five second response time and enables customers to build payment files and deliver them in a secure format to the bank with all transactions time-logged. The package is available on the market now starting at UKP125,000, but an upgraded version, Global Exchange, will be available from September and will include Electronic Data Interchange support. National Data Corp, an independent provider of specialised business communication and information processing services with a turnover of $229m, believes itself adequately placed to corner this market as competitors so far can offer only communications between personal computers without a middle-man system. It claims that this limits user numbers to a maximum of 50, and that it makes them vulnerable to local faults.
