CITIBANK MINES DATA--MARKETING GOALS WARRANT PARALLEL PROCESSING Citibank wants to do more than track its credit-card holders' buying behavior. Soon, it hopes to know what they'll purchase next, and who's committing fraud. Data-mining techniques and data warehouses, part of a project called the Cards Analytical Model (CAM) slated to be completed by the end of 1997, are the tools Citicorp Credit Services in Long Island City, N.Y., hopes to use to predict future consumer patterns. To make CAM work, Citibank's IS team knew it needed a powerful mainframe-class system to handle the complex formulas and algorithms pounding away on close to 2 terabytes of data. But the mainframe wasn't an option. "We didn't want the data warehouse to impact our OLTP (online transaction processing) production," says Kevin Murphy, VP of IS for Citicorp Credit Services. "We didn't have the luxury to give up cycles and drives." Instead, Citicorp chose the IBM RS/6000 SP MPP (massively parallel processing), consisting of 116 nodes (or processors) and 7 terabytes of storage capacity. The database is DB2 Parallel Edition, also from IBM. More than 50 C++ and C developers, from Citicorp and Lockheed Martin, the systems integrator, are working on the CAM project. -- Information Week, 10/07/96 American Banker: Wednesday, October 9, 1996 Card Frontiers Citi Alumna's Consultancy to Focus on New Technologies By Jeffrey Kutler Catherine Allen, the former Citibank vice president and founding chairman of the Smart Card Forum, announced the formation of a consulting partnership, the Santa Fe Group. She is president and chief executive officer of the firm. Former Citibank technologist Ted Fine and entrepreneur Howard Sherman, who helped develop the Midas and SuperCuts franchise operations, are executive vice presidents. The aim is to help businesses understand and assimilate innovations in management and technology. The firm's base, New Mexico's capital city, is a hotbed of the study of complex adaptive systems, a scientific discipline that is crossing over into business management. Ms. Allen said she hopes to "break new ground by applying complexity theory to practical business challenges." She has scheduled a forum, "Complexity and Technology: Organizing for Innovation," in early November. Mr. Fine, who managed Citibank's global consumer systems, said the firm could help "master the challenge" of emerging technologies like the Internet and smart cards. Ms. Allen had been developing the business since she left Citibank early this year. Santa Fe Group has been working on several consulting assignments, but didn't begin widely advertising its services until mid-September. --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps