IBM Case Studies China Minsheng Banking Corp., Ltd. Enhances Service Continuity with IBM's Advanced Database Clustering Technology

Edit This Case Study Record

	China Minsheng Banking Corp., Ltd. Enhances Service Continuity with IBM's Advanced Database Clustering Technology IBM

China Minsheng Banking Corp., Ltd. Enhances Service Continuity with IBM's Advanced Database Clustering Technology

IBM

Technology Category	Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Databases
Applicable Industries	Finance & Insurance Retail
Applicable Functions	Sales & Marketing
Use Cases	Construction Management Time Sensitive Networking
Services	System Integration
Challenge	China Minsheng Banking Corp., Ltd. (CMBC), one of China's leading retail banks, was faced with the challenge of meeting rising customer expectations for 24/7 banking services while keeping costs under control. In an increasingly 24/7 world, customers expect online and telephone banking services to be available whenever they need them. Banks that fail to provide seamless customer service risk losing market share to competitors. CMBC wanted to outperform its competitors by ensuring that its business-critical systems were online and available to customers at all times. Specifically, CMBC wanted to ensure non-stop availability of the mission-critical system it relies on to calculate the fees it charges for each transaction, as any delays or interruptions could have far-reaching consequences for customer satisfaction and the bank's reputation. The system supports billing and accumulation for CMBC's front-office operations, arrearage and inquiry statistics for the back office, and periodical and protocol billing for the entire bank, making 2.5 million calculations each day. Read More
About Customer	China Minsheng Banking Corp., Ltd. (CMBC) is one of China's leading retail banks, focusing on small and medium enterprises and on high-end retail customers. It is the first bank in China to be primarily owned by non-government enterprises. CMBC manages total assets of CNY 3.2 trillion, and operates 33 branches and more than 700 banking outlets. The bank is committed to meeting rising customer expectations for 24/7 banking services while keeping costs under control. It aims to outperform its competitors by ensuring that its business-critical systems are online and available to customers at all times. Read More
Solution	CMBC chose to deploy a geographically displaced IBM® DB2® pureScale® cluster (GDPC) to support its fee-per-transaction system. The cluster runs on IBM Power® 750 Express servers located at two sites. The pureScale technology enables simultaneous read and write operations to both sites, and can achieve near-instant failover in the event of a disaster. By writing data to both servers simultaneously, the solution ensures that the databases at both sites are almost completely synchronized at all times, despite the 60 kilometer distance between them. This approach also maximizes the utilization of resources: instead of having a standby server that is idle most of the time, both of the servers in the cluster are constantly available to support the bank's business processes. IBM DB2 pureScale is transparent to applications, helping CMBC to rapidly get started with the solution. The ability to add cluster members and resources as desired enables the bank to scale up the platform horizontally as well as vertically, helping to remove barriers to expansion. Read More Log in to view content
Contents

Technology Category

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Databases

Applicable Industries

Finance & Insurance

Retail

Applicable Functions

Sales & Marketing

Use Cases

Construction Management

Time Sensitive Networking

Services

System Integration

Challenge

China Minsheng Banking Corp., Ltd. (CMBC), one of China's leading retail banks, was faced with the challenge of meeting rising customer expectations for 24/7 banking services while keeping costs under control. In an increasingly 24/7 world, customers expect online and telephone banking services to be available whenever they need them. Banks that fail to provide seamless customer service risk losing market share to competitors. CMBC wanted to outperform its competitors by ensuring that its business-critical systems were online and available to customers at all times. Specifically, CMBC wanted to ensure non-stop availability of the mission-critical system it relies on to calculate the fees it charges for each transaction, as any delays or interruptions could have far-reaching consequences for customer satisfaction and the bank's reputation. The system supports billing and accumulation for CMBC's front-office operations, arrearage and inquiry statistics for the back office, and periodical and protocol billing for the entire bank, making 2.5 million calculations each day.

About Customer

China Minsheng Banking Corp., Ltd. (CMBC) is one of China's leading retail banks, focusing on small and medium enterprises and on high-end retail customers. It is the first bank in China to be primarily owned by non-government enterprises. CMBC manages total assets of CNY 3.2 trillion, and operates 33 branches and more than 700 banking outlets. The bank is committed to meeting rising customer expectations for 24/7 banking services while keeping costs under control. It aims to outperform its competitors by ensuring that its business-critical systems are online and available to customers at all times.

Solution

CMBC chose to deploy a geographically displaced IBM® DB2® pureScale® cluster (GDPC) to support its fee-per-transaction system. The cluster runs on IBM Power® 750 Express servers located at two sites. The pureScale technology enables simultaneous read and write operations to both sites, and can achieve near-instant failover in the event of a disaster. By writing data to both servers simultaneously, the solution ensures that the databases at both sites are almost completely synchronized at all times, despite the 60 kilometer distance between them. This approach also maximizes the utilization of resources: instead of having a standby server that is idle most of the time, both of the servers in the cluster are constantly available to support the bank's business processes. IBM DB2 pureScale is transparent to applications, helping CMBC to rapidly get started with the solution. The ability to add cluster members and resources as desired enables the bank to scale up the platform horizontally as well as vertically, helping to remove barriers to expansion.

Impact #1	The IBM solution enables unprecedented levels of availability for CMBC's business-critical transaction fee calculation system, helping the bank deliver exceptional service continuity to customers. The solution plays a key role in CMBC's ability to provide consistently exceptional services to its customers across all channels. It also dramatically reduces the bank's operational risk, helping it to take unforeseen events in stride. The new capabilities have not come at the cost of efficiency. IBM DB2 pureScale brings new economics to the continuity of available data, allowing CMBC to transform its infrastructure without prohibitive costs. It also allows the bank to boost utilization of resources by removing the need for cold systems that are simply kept as a backup. In the future, CMBC plans to migrate other business-critical systems to the IBM GDPC platform, adding new layers of protection against service interruptions, and helping the bank to retain its market share.

Impact #1

The IBM solution enables unprecedented levels of availability for CMBC's business-critical transaction fee calculation system, helping the bank deliver exceptional service continuity to customers. The solution plays a key role in CMBC's ability to provide consistently exceptional services to its customers across all channels. It also dramatically reduces the bank's operational risk, helping it to take unforeseen events in stride. The new capabilities have not come at the cost of efficiency. IBM DB2 pureScale brings new economics to the continuity of available data, allowing CMBC to transform its infrastructure without prohibitive costs. It also allows the bank to boost utilization of resources by removing the need for cold systems that are simply kept as a backup. In the future, CMBC plans to migrate other business-critical systems to the IBM GDPC platform, adding new layers of protection against service interruptions, and helping the bank to retain its market share.

Benefit #1	Reduced Recovery Time Objective (RTO) for the transaction fee calculation system to almost zero
Benefit #2	The system supports billing and accumulation for CMBC's front-office operations, arrearage and inquiry statistics for the back office, and periodical and protocol billing for the entire bank, making 2.5 million calculations each day
Benefit #3	The solution ensures that the databases at both sites are almost completely synchronized at all times, despite the 60 kilometer distance between them

Benefit #1

Reduced Recovery Time Objective (RTO) for the transaction fee calculation system to almost zero

Benefit #2

The system supports billing and accumulation for CMBC's front-office operations, arrearage and inquiry statistics for the back office, and periodical and protocol billing for the entire bank, making 2.5 million calculations each day

Benefit #3

The solution ensures that the databases at both sites are almost completely synchronized at all times, despite the 60 kilometer distance between them

Download PDF Version

Overview

China Minsheng Banking Corp., Ltd. Enhances Service Continuity with IBM's Advanced Database Clustering Technology

Operational Impact

Quantitative Benefit