Credit Suisse is planning to recoup the internal software
development costs of creating a virtualisation management
application by forming a commercial software company to sell the
software.
This is the first time the bank has taken its own internal
software to market.
The investment bank had develop its own software, called VRM,
because no commercial software company offered tools that would
allow Credit Suisse to manage the creation and destruction of
virtual machines from different suppliers to comply with financial
services regulations.
Credit Suisse plans to sell the software through a company
called DynamicOps.
Leslie Muller, chief technology officer and founder of
DynamicOps, and formerly director of server virtualisation at
Credit Suisse, said, "Internally, Credit Suisse struggled with
losing our commercial advantage. But in the end we realised it was
essential to spin it out in order to develop the product."
As people left Credit Suisse and joined other banks, Muller said
the relatively small investment banking community learned about
VRM. "Other investment banks began asking us if they could buy the
product." Credit Suisse delayed spinning out VRM into a commercial
product until the start of 2008, to maximise its competitive edge,
Muller said.
VRM started as a software project in 2005 to support a
company-wide plan to virtualise its desktop and server IT estate,
of 60,000 desktops and 20,000 Linux and Windows servers.
The VRM product is being launched officially on June 28th.
