By Asgar Hussein

Interblocks Limited's internet payment solution, iPay, is now available on the IBM eServer iSeries. Interblocks is a banking and financial services solutions company specialising in secure payment processing and management of delivery channels and customer touch-points.

Engineers from Interblocks' payment technology group recently worked with the IBM iSeries team at their Partner World for Developers (PWD) lab in Bangalore, India and successfully optimised their solution on the iSeries.

The open standards characteristics of the application (it is J2EE compliant) and the advanced technology of the iSeries helped the systems to adapt well to the conversions with minimum changes to the software. The application testing included stress tests and quality tests with simulations of live environment scenarios.

Director Software, Interblocks, Suren Kohombange said, "The availability of iPay on the iSeries is a milestone for the application. The iPay implementation in Sri Lanka enabled the island nation to accept online payments and fuel the growth of business on the internet. The solution was later picked up by global financial solutions provider Schlumberger Sema to complement its suite of banking applications."

Manager, Enterprise Systems Group, IBM Sri Lanka, K.N. Sivakumar said, "The IBM eServer iSeries is all about integration and flexibility. The iSeries supports a variety of operating systems such as Windows 2000, Linux and OS/400, as well as applications written for various environments like Domino and WebSphere."

"We are confident that the availability of iPay on the iSeries will catalyse the growth of banking and financial business on the internet across Sri Lanka."

Chief Executive, Interblocks, Dinesh Rodrigo said, "iPay will now provide banks with the option of implementing Interblocks' payments solutions on the iSeries. The iSeries platform is widely accepted in the financial sector, and its logical partitioning capability enables banks to optimise their investment".

Interblocks' solutions enable secure financial transaction processing and management. Started in 2000, Interblocks has successfully used technology to deliver financial services to a variety of channels.

The company specialises in developing solutions for the commercial and financial markets. Interblocks' solutions are J2EE compliant and fully XML-based, thereby enabling compliance across all major platforms and standards.

Interblocks has a team of over 50 ICT professionals carrying out development of the iSuite using industry standard application development and messaging platforms ensuring state-of-the-art solutions of the highest quality.

Some of its products include iSwitch-ATM management system, iPay-internet based payment solution, and iBank, an internet banking application.

IBM offers a full line of data transaction, web application and appliance servers that embrace industry standards.

Powered by breakthroughs such as microprocessors with copper wiring and silicon-on-insulator technology, IBM servers have captured industry leading benchmarks that measure transactions, web serving capabilities and performance in software applications. The IBM eServer line is an integral part of customised, flexible and scalable internet solutions for companies of all sizes. Linux is capable of running on IBM's entire eServer line.