Alfa-Bank uses the solutions Vision Solutions in the IT systems

Alfa-Bank is the largest private commercial bank in Russia. In staff of the company about 26 thousand people work, and for ensuring stable work one of the most large-scale centralized IT infrastructures is used. Fully to satisfy customer needs, already today the systems of bank daily process more than 1.5 TB of data. At the same time the number of transactions annually increases by 30-40% that affects requirements and the importance of observance of SLA. Errors are inadmissible, each of them is capable to lead to large-scale financial and reputation losses. For creation of the failsafe environment with high degree of scalability within joint work of specialists of Alfa-Bank and Diona Holding the solutions Vision Solutions were selected: MIMIX Availability, Double-Take Availability and Double-Take Share.

The solution MIMIX is used in the most important IT structures of Alfa-Bank – in the central banking system. Under its protection there are all data of clients, their account and the history of transactions. Loss of similar information is equivalent to the accident capable to do much harm reputations of bank and to call into question its reliability. Even the slightest failure should be recovered in the shortest possible time. MIMIX provides optimal indicators of RTO and RPO for Alfa-Bank. Also MIMIX® helps to achieve disaster tolerance of IT-systems, the module for work with personnel of SAP HR and a system of accounting of arrears of Collection.

Double-Take Availability is applied by bank to protection of electronic archive on the AIX platform from IBM, and Double-Take Share is selected by Alfa-Bank for a replitsirovaniye of the delta of changes from the central banking system in DWH (Data Warehouse) that allows to obtain the valuable data useful to formation of the business reporting.

2013

Alfa-Bank with the assistance of Diona Holding company carried out implementation of the infrastructure solution on the product MIMIX, the company integrator reported on March 25, 2013.

Signs of stability

The solution is based on the product MIMIX (Vision Solutions) and the IBM Power Systems servers. Such solution provides users of SAP with the advanced functionality in the field of high availability and permanent data protection.

Implementation of MIMIX provides a possibility of control of administrative and operating activities of the customer during failure of a system, constancy of access to necessary information and also timeliness of solving of tasks of centralized operation with data.

"Alfa-Bank uses developments of Vision Solutions more than ten years, and we learned by the experience in their reliability and efficiency. The bank is guided by the highest quality of work and is not able to afford idle times in work because of loss of access to primary servers. For this reason we selected the checked solutions of Vision Solutions for protection of crucial business systems, now, including and SAP", - Artem Shakhverdyan, the deputy head of department of the integration systems of the Information technologies block of Alfa-Bank noted.

Alexander Trekin, the area director of Vision Solutions across Russia and the CIS countries, emphasized: "We are glad that our solutions are demanded by such large player of the Russian market as Alfa-Bank. It is not the first experience of effective cooperation of our companies, and we with big optimism look forward. Vision Solutions works at the market of cloud computing more than 20 years, providing qualitative solutions for the clients worldwide. At the same time the Russian market has for us priority value and is one of strategic directions of development".

2011

Task

Upon completion of each working day the staff of Alfa-Bank needs to perform procedures for closing of banking applications. During this period clients of bank could not work with accounts, perform operations, use services of Internet bank or ATMs. Need of expansion of a branch network across all territory of Russia in different time zones set the task to abolish idle times of IT infrastructure and to achieve business continuity for the staff of Alfa-Bank.

Results

• Business continuity in all time zones - 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
• Round-the-clock access for clients to ATMs, Internet bank and other transactions
• Permanent protection and availability of critically significant financial information
• The protected and flexible environment for testing of new applications, updating and system maintenance
• The proved solution compatibility of MIMIX of NA with applications and the equipment
• Rapid and simple implementation

The implemented technologies

• MIMIX HA for i5/OS™
• Working machine: IBM® Power Systems Model 595 server
• Remote reserve machine: IBM® Power Systems Model 595 server
• Banking software of Misys Equation, including 24x7 Continuous Processing Facility

Solution

Before project implementation the IT department of Alfa-Bank analyzed all range of software solutions, available in the market. As a result the choice fell on MIMIX from Vision Solutions. Working in close cooperation with the partner IBM Russia, the Vision Solutions company provided fast and professional product introduction. MIMIX offers the increased protection of significant applications and data on the standby server ready to work at prime necessity (for example, at emergence of interruptions in power supply). The solution also cuts down the expenses caused by the planned idle times (at routine maintenance of servers or updating of applications), due to switching of users to a standby server on which they can continue the work.

'We were attracted that Vision Solutions and IBM companies cooperate for many years. They performed implementation by joint forces, having saved us from need to involve additional consultants in the field of program and the equipment and a prodderzhka, - Mednov Sergey says. - And results were tremendous'.