NikkoCiti is a wholesale investment bank established as a joint venture between Nikko Cordial Corporation, with 110 branches throughout Japan, and Citigroup, Inc., with a network spanning more than 100 countries.

NikkoCiti is a combination of these two companies' networks, human resources, systems, experience and achievements. The first of its kind in Japan, NikkoCiti is a global wholesale investment bank offering customers the highest quality in financial services. It is the fifth-ranked investment bank in Japan with assets under management exceeding $US 60 billion.

Relocating to the Heart of Tokyo’s Financial District

In 2006 a major project was initiated to move the corporate offices to the prestigious Shin-Marunouchi building, in the heart of the financial district of Tokyo, overlooking both Tokyo station and the Imperial Palace. In total, more than 3000 employees of Citi, Nikko Cordial and NikkoCiti were to be relocated, including two of the biggest trading floors in Tokyo.

Taking the opportunities afforded by the relocation, NikkoCiti management decided to completely pre-build both trading floors. Expected advantages accruing from this decision were:

• Consolidation of PC footprints by providing fewer, more powerful workstations optimized for the computing requirements of the traders
• Reduction in PC support requirements by reducing the total number of supported equipment types
• Increased uptime from the provision of all new equipment for all staff

In realizing this vision, NikkoCiti was required to undertake several prerequisite projects in order to prepare the organization to occupy the pre-built floors. These projects were upgrading the entire fleet of PC from Windows 2000 to Windows XP and retiring the UNIX workstations on the trading floor in favor of Windows PCs running Hummingbird's Exceed X-windows software.

Project Recovery

By April of 2007, it was becoming clear the project timelines was in trouble. While most pre-requisite projects were meeting their deadlines, the End User Technology efforts were lagging, threatening the entire schedule. The subsequent departure of the project manager in overall control of these efforts pushed the situation into crisis mode.

In response, NikkoCiti engaged Fusion Systems to provide project managers, infrastructure and development staff to bring these projects back under control and ensure that they met the ever tightening deadlines for the relocation.

Embracing Fusion Systems' core values of ‘your deadline is our deadline' and using solid project recovery and project management processes, Fusion's project managers were quickly able to audit the status of the projects, identify key barriers to progress and implement remedial programs.

Exceeding Expectations

Eliminating the requirement for the UNIX workstations on the trading floors was a key deliverable for the project. Removing the requirement for expensive infrastructure both in the datacenter and on the trading floor, consolidation of computing power with the PC-based applications and the elimination of redundant support groups would result in significant gains for NikkoCiti.

However, the reality of porting these applications to Hummingbird's Exceed 11 proved to be a significant challenge. While essential to the trading business, most applications were aged, with limited internal knowledge within the current development teams. Complicating matters was the considerable internal resistance to making such a radical change to the trading environment.

Through deep understanding of both the Exceed product and the underlying UNIX X-window infrastructure, Fusion's expert development teams were able quickly determine the key issues and develop the necessary customizations that allowed the old application to operate successfully in the new environment. Where necessary, helper applications were developed and deployed to provide the necessary bridging between the older UNIX code and the new PC environment.