IBM Case Studies Fransabank: Delighting customers with responsive and reliable in-branch, web and mobile banking

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	Fransabank: Delighting customers with responsive and reliable in-branch, web and mobile banking IBM

Fransabank: Delighting customers with responsive and reliable in-branch, web and mobile banking

IBM

Technology Category	Application Infrastructure & Middleware - API Integration & Management Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Storage Services
Applicable Industries	Finance & Insurance
Applicable Functions	Business Operation
Use Cases	Predictive Maintenance Process Control & Optimization
Services	Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services System Integration
Challenge	Fransabank, one of Lebanon's largest banks, was experiencing rapid business growth that was putting a strain on its core systems. The bank was concerned about the performance of critical batch processing tasks at the start and end of each working day, and at the end of each month. These processing tasks, which ensure that all transactions are applied accurately and all accounts reconciled, are effectively a statutory requirement as well as enabling the bank to have an accurate view of its business performance. As the business grew rapidly and continuously, a main pillar of their IT strategy was to implement a robust, scalable and highly performing infrastructure capable of accompanying the business growth by processing a larger volume of data and transactions in less time. This would avoid any potential future service impact and secure the end-of-day processing before the branches opened at 8 am—without any concerns about the significant volume growth. Read More
About Customer	Fransabank is the oldest and among the largest of Lebanon’s banks, providing universal banking services through 124 branches. The bank has offices in nine other countries and reported net profits of USD179.8 million in financial year 2015 with total assets of USD20 billion. Fransabank has achieved exceptional growth in recent years. FY 2014 saw the successful acquisition of another major bank, contributing to year-on-year growth of 11.66 percent in total assets and 12.75 percent in shareholders’ equity. And from a peak year-on-year growth rate of 40.88 percent in 2011, net loans to customers have since settled to around 10 percent in year-on-year growth—still a highly impressive figure. Read More
Solution	Fransabank decided to deploy a completely new SAB AT core banking solution, with the back-office components running on the IBM i operating system and the front-office components running on IBM WebSphere Application Server on the IBM AIX operating system. Both components run side-by-side on IBM PowerVM on the same IBM Power 870 server in the production environment, and the landscape is duplicated in a second data center for protection against disaster. When it comes to ensuring exceptional end-to-end performance and high availability for critical systems, the storage layer is a vital consideration. Fransabank reviewed options from leading global vendors before selecting IBM DS8870 enterprise disk systems at the heart of a new virtualized storage landscape. Complementing the DS8870 systems in its primary and DR sites, Fransabank deployed IBM FlashSystem solutions to provide a “tier zero” of ultra-fast storage and IBM Storwize V7000 systems to provide flexible internally tiered storage for files and archived data. The entire landscape is virtualized using IBM Spectrum Virtualize, which enables Fransabank to manage sophisticated policy-based migration of data up and down the tiers as performance requirements change. Read More Log in to view content
Contents

Technology Category

Application Infrastructure & Middleware - API Integration & Management

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Storage Services

Applicable Industries

Finance & Insurance

Applicable Functions

Business Operation

Use Cases

Predictive Maintenance

Process Control & Optimization

Services

Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services

System Integration

Challenge

Fransabank, one of Lebanon's largest banks, was experiencing rapid business growth that was putting a strain on its core systems. The bank was concerned about the performance of critical batch processing tasks at the start and end of each working day, and at the end of each month. These processing tasks, which ensure that all transactions are applied accurately and all accounts reconciled, are effectively a statutory requirement as well as enabling the bank to have an accurate view of its business performance. As the business grew rapidly and continuously, a main pillar of their IT strategy was to implement a robust, scalable and highly performing infrastructure capable of accompanying the business growth by processing a larger volume of data and transactions in less time. This would avoid any potential future service impact and secure the end-of-day processing before the branches opened at 8 am—without any concerns about the significant volume growth.

About Customer

Fransabank is the oldest and among the largest of Lebanon’s banks, providing universal banking services through 124 branches. The bank has offices in nine other countries and reported net profits of USD179.8 million in financial year 2015 with total assets of USD20 billion. Fransabank has achieved exceptional growth in recent years. FY 2014 saw the successful acquisition of another major bank, contributing to year-on-year growth of 11.66 percent in total assets and 12.75 percent in shareholders’ equity. And from a peak year-on-year growth rate of 40.88 percent in 2011, net loans to customers have since settled to around 10 percent in year-on-year growth—still a highly impressive figure.

Solution

Fransabank decided to deploy a completely new SAB AT core banking solution, with the back-office components running on the IBM i operating system and the front-office components running on IBM WebSphere Application Server on the IBM AIX operating system. Both components run side-by-side on IBM PowerVM on the same IBM Power 870 server in the production environment, and the landscape is duplicated in a second data center for protection against disaster. When it comes to ensuring exceptional end-to-end performance and high availability for critical systems, the storage layer is a vital consideration. Fransabank reviewed options from leading global vendors before selecting IBM DS8870 enterprise disk systems at the heart of a new virtualized storage landscape. Complementing the DS8870 systems in its primary and DR sites, Fransabank deployed IBM FlashSystem solutions to provide a “tier zero” of ultra-fast storage and IBM Storwize V7000 systems to provide flexible internally tiered storage for files and archived data. The entire landscape is virtualized using IBM Spectrum Virtualize, which enables Fransabank to manage sophisticated policy-based migration of data up and down the tiers as performance requirements change.

Impact #1	With its new core banking software running on IBM Power Systems servers and backed by IBM storage, Fransabank is confident that performance will keep pace with growing demands.
Impact #2	With a fully virtualized storage landscape managed by IBM Spectrum Virtualize, with the highly scalable DS8870 at its heart, Fransabank can continue to grow its business without any concerns about rising data volumes.

Impact #1

With its new core banking software running on IBM Power Systems servers and backed by IBM storage, Fransabank is confident that performance will keep pace with growing demands.

Impact #2

With a fully virtualized storage landscape managed by IBM Spectrum Virtualize, with the highly scalable DS8870 at its heart, Fransabank can continue to grow its business without any concerns about rising data volumes.

Benefit #1	40% boost in performance for start-of-day processing
Benefit #2	Saved >3h every night, eliminating risk of batch processes overrunning
Benefit #3	Cut >5h from end-of-month financial consolidation, accelerating insight

Benefit #1

40% boost in performance for start-of-day processing

Benefit #2

Saved >3h every night, eliminating risk of batch processes overrunning

Benefit #3

Cut >5h from end-of-month financial consolidation, accelerating insight

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Overview

Fransabank: Delighting customers with responsive and reliable in-branch, web and mobile banking

Operational Impact

Quantitative Benefit