BIS Review 104/1997  -2-  The Reserve Banks’ critical applications, such as Fedwire funds and securities transfer, ACH, and supporting accounting systems, run on mainframe computer systems operated by Federal Reserve Automation Services (FRAS), the internal organizational unit that processes applications on behalf of the Federal Reserve Banks and operates the Federal Reserve’s national network.
These critical applications are “centralized”, that is, one copy of the application is used by all twelve Reserve Banks. In addition to centralized applications on the mainframe, the Federal Reserve Banks operate a range of applications in a distributed computing environment, supporting business functions such as cash distribution, banking supervision and regulation, research, public information, and human resources.