Veeam helps BankservAfrica evolve Payment System

The Business Challenge

BankservAfrica has a proud heritage as the trusted utility to enable the distribution of wealth and currency in a thriving, vibrant and diverse nation. South Africa’s National Payment System (NPS) is widely acknowledged as one of the most efficient and effective in the world.

To maintain the reliability and robustness of the NPS, BankservAfrica invested in state-of-the-art data centres and disaster recovery (DR) strategies. The goal was real-time, continuous payment processing to ensure that participating banks can provide service to their customers 24.7.365.

“Payments and transactions are our lifeblood, so we understand the need for modernisation in the payment landscape,” said Hamman Ferreira, Chief Technology Officer at BankservAfrica. “We are constantly thriving to safeguard against disaster.”

Modernising the payment landscape required BankservAfrica to modernise the way it protects data.

“Our backup technology required updating to meet the ongoing demands of the ever-evolving payments industry and alignment with new technologies. This also ensures that backup, recovery and testing is enhanced. Additionally, that we successfully protect and guarantee the data at all times.” Ferreira said.

Slow backup in some of the legacy systems and recovery at times caused delays for BankservAfrica to meet recovery point objectives (RTPO™) in service level agreements (SLAs) with customers. Ferreira said rapidly growing data (30 percent per year) added to ensuring that systems were enhanced to meet capacity and SLAs.

“Mobile banking and the need for real-time data analytics have grown dramatically in popularity, which are some of the main reasons behind our data growth,” Ferreira said.

Sub-Saharan Africa countries, including South Africa, have recorded the largest growth of mobile bank accounts being opened globally, according to Moody’s Investor Service. Approximately 12 percent of adults had mobile bank accounts in 2015, compared to 2 percent globally.

“Up until recently, cash was king, but that has changed substantially as mobile devices and connectivity become more cost-effective,” Ferreira said. “Mobile banking is more popular than ever and growing fast, making data backup and recovery even more important.”

The Veeam Solution

BankservAfrica deployed Veeam® Backup & Replication™ in its new, modern data centres. Veeam helps BankservAfrica process payments continuously as Veeam delivers 24.7.365 data availability.

“Veeam is the obvious choice for modern businesses,” Ferreira said, “It makes our IT infrastructure more robust by protecting our data and guaranteeing availability 24.7.365.”

In addition, Veeam helps BankservAfrica meet SLAs with customers and saves 50% in backup costs.

Meeting SLAs has been simplified and accelerated substantially with Veeam because backup is 60 percent faster and recovery is 98 percent faster. BankservAfrica can test the recoverability of backups using a Veeam feature called SureBackup®.

Veeam was 50 percent less expensive than competing solutions. It furthermore provides BankservAfrica scalability and is designed to back up thousands of virtual machines and petabytes of data.

“Veeam delivers a level of value that competing solutions were unable to meet; both monetarily and peace of mind,” Ferreira commented.

“In December 2016, we processed 128 million transactions—unprecedented in our history,” Ferreira said. “That number will become the norm eventually. We have complete confidence Veeam will continue to deliver 24.7.365 availability of data.”

The Results

• Delivers 24.7.365 availability of banking data
  BankservAfrica constantly innovates and invests in modern technologies to ensure that the dependability and robustness of the South African National Payment System continues seamlessly. Veeam helps by delivering 24.7.365 availability of data.
• Meets customer SLAs easily
  Veeam is 60 percent faster compared to legacy backup. Recovery is 98 percent faster. Improved backup and recovery speeds assists BankservAfrica continuously meet stringent SLAs with customers.
• Saves 50% in backup costs
  In addition to being 50 percent more cost-effective than competing solutions, Veeam provides BankservAfrica with scalability for the future. Data is growing by 30 percent each year, and Veeam will continue to deliver data 24.7.365.