I found these links today in response to a customer question around ‘real world’ benchmarks for financial applications running on SQL Server. These benchmarks describe the TEMENOS T24 Core Banking system, which is probably as ‘real world’ as it gets.

http://blogs.technet.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer-Blogs-Components-WeblogFiles/00-00-00-85-48-Files/4617.Benchmark-Results-for-Temenos-T24–with-SQL-Server-2008-R2-on-Intel_2D00_based-NEC-Servers.pdf

http://download.microsoft.com/download/B/2/3/B23E0B02-AA00-4921-8A76-B4384B6197DD/sql-temenos-t24.pdf