IT services as new business of FG Life. Interview with Denis Garevsky

Denis Garevsky, deputy chief of department of IT of FG Life, Probusinessbank

TAdviser: Denis, tell, please, how providing IT services to external clients can be organized?

Denis Garevsky: Classical banking already actually does not give rise to anything new therefore we look for new opportunities and the directions of increase in profit. One of them is providing IT services to external customers.

It can be different telecom services and also services based on cloud computing. In particular, next year we are going to unroll a cloud based on which at first we will organize services for internal users, and afterwards – and paid services for "external" clients.

Now in our company the concept of "the earning IT" within which the IT department is selected in a separate division is considered, it is possible – based on the separate legal entity. According to the plan we will have to begin to render the first paid services in 2015. At the same time before us accurate KPI on the amount which we will have to earn will be delivered.

TAdviser: Cloud infrastructure will be unrolled already very soon. What services you are going to provide to external customers on its basis?

Denis Garevsky: A technology part of the project is now studied, the final portfolio of services is not built yet. We are going to begin with mass services which many companies already provide. It can be, for example, providing storages for any data, and not only media and data.

The client can store the financial information on the selected resources and get access to it from any devices. Payment of these resources can be performed according to different schemes: for example, it can be estimated on the volume of the selected resource, and can be included in a tariff plan of bank.

Also we consider the possibility of providing virtual work places – a certain "remote" office as to clients of FG Life, and those who did not manage to become them yet.

We expect demand for such service among clients of Group: as they already trust us the money and data on themselves, most likely, will be ready to select bank as provider of services and for automation of the business. In our opinion, making the decision whether to store the data, for example, in a cloud of the mobile operator or in a cloud of bank, bank clients with a bigger share of probability will select bank.

TAdviser: And what service based on cloud computing will be organized for internal users?

Denis Garevsky: For internal users we are going to unroll, first of all, the private cloud allowing users to get an information access far off from any devices. For access isolation to data we will use different politicians of their storage. I think, for internal use we will start a cloud at the beginning of 2015.

TAdviser: How will infrastructure based on which it is going to render services be arranged, including – based on a cloud platform?

Denis Garevsky: We are going to unroll a cloud on the equipment of Hitachi which will be placed in our own DPC. I will note that earlier we were more multivendor concerning the used hardware platforms, however in the course of their operation came to a conclusion that the equipment of Hitachi suits us in terms of reliability, non-failure operation of work and performance more. For this reason gradually we transferred to it all most critical IT systems of bank.

For cloud services, in particular, we will use the Hitachi Content Platform platform. It allows users to get data access both through the uniform portal, and through different client applications for mobile devices which are in an arsenal of any modern person: it can be the mobile phone, the tablet or the normal notebook. Using such approach we are going to make service for data storage by the most transparent and convenient for clients.

For the organization of other services, for example, of virtual work places, we are also going to use resources of our DPCs which were upgraded recently, including, resources of servers from Hitachi of a line Compute Blade. Besides, now we also think of possible replacement of technology of virtualization at the level of storage systems which is already used in bank, on the solution for virtualization of Hitachi.