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The international Forbis Company and its daughter enterprise House of Credit Unions implement the FORPOST banking information system to its clients. This innovative banking information system enables a bank, a credit union or any other financial institution to provide all the main financial services. Complex bank processes are combined into one integer system, the main baking activity is ensured and the following financial services are being provided to clients: account management, payments, loans, payment cards, securities, investments, electronic banking services and the like.

 

“Exponential growth of data flows is noticed in many spheres, and the banking activity is not an exception. Earlier some figures would do to transfer the necessary information, and now to exchange with other institutions, banks use large .xml files, which must be processed and stored. In fact, it demands huge capacity of the systems, as well as constant expansion of infrastructural powers. Moreover, on all the levels there must be ensured speed of data exchange”, commented on the work specifics Aleksandr Serebriakov, head of the Forbis System Administration Department.

 

For quite a long time, the technological base available in Forbis would do for processing and storing of the data; the company would itself take care and maintain its IT infrastructure. However, growing data flows urged the company to make its choice: either to devote time and funds to maintain the IT infrastructure and to constantly perform the updates or to concentrate on its main business, i.e. to create and provide information systems to banks. The decision was influenced by the fact that Forbis, as the majority of advanced software vendors, attempts to implement SaaS models (Software as a Service). Thus, a need of having a reliable cloud computing partner is even more than relevant.

 

The preliminary calculations have shown that the amount of investments into the own infrastructure and maintenance shall pay off already on the fourth or fifth year. There was also evaluated a risk of technological changes – within the nearest three or four years the development of data flows and technologies may ultimately change the situation, then the investments may significantly go down in value.

 

 

From possible service providers Forbis demanded secure solutions, flexibility, capacity and minimum off-time. Those were only several criteria, which should be met by Atea group’s Baltneta communications (Baltneta). The project lasted for four months. Even three fourth of the project implementation time were devoted to test systems. First of all, there were created test environments in the Baltneta production environment. When performing testing, the capacity of the client application activity was measured. After the tests, the data centres of the project parties were successfully combined. During the process, there were carried out negotiations with third parties, whose systems are being used by Forbis. After having transferred the production infrastructure from the client into the Baltneta clouds, the precise date was determined for making system back-ups. Later the final ware was moved to the data centre. And after changing of the network parameters, the operation was started in the Baltneta data centre.

 

 

The parties participating in the implementation of the project agree that the most important thing was to maintain continuous communication, and owing to the synergy everything would flow even smoother than it was planned. “As it was expected, nobody has noticed or experienced any inconveniences related to data migration. And heads of the Forbis Company were surprised that everything was implemented promptly and smoothly”, said Aleksandr Serebriakov.

 

In the opinion of Piotr Kozlovskij, head of division of Baltneta Data Centre services, it is important not just to speak out and make offers, but also to hear the needs of the customer, since it may help to prevent certain problems. As he has noted, it was quite easy to communicate with the customer, since both parties realised that continuous communication, when implementing the project, would guarantee success.

 

Source: www.balt.net