Islamic Bank of Thailand future-proofs their storage

Overview

Challenge

• High Growth and Diversification of Data

Solution

• Hitachi Unified Storage 130 and Hitachi IT Operations Analyzer

Outcome

• IBank Looks Ahead

Challenge

Established in 2003, Islamic Bank of Thailand (IBank) began its official operations as the government bank to serve the customers who are not eligible for the financial services of commercial banks, such as small businesses and Muslims.

To accommodate the escalating amounts of data generated by its business operations every year, IBank determined that improved data management was essential. The bank chose Hitachi Unified Storage (HUS) to answer this data challenge. By using HUS to manage and store data for digital content, IBank ensured speedy and convenient data access, while enhancing security and creditability.

Previously, data of IBank had a growth rate at around 30%, annually. But from 2010 to 2011, the data saw significant growth rate increase: up to 100% due to the business expansion in terms of branches, customer bases and employees. Currently, the bank holds over 750,000 accounts across 107 branches nationwide, staffed by 2,800 employees.

“With significant data growth rate and storage in various departments, it is difficult to trace data and retrieve lost data. So, we need to set up a storage roadmap as the centralized system to gather all data from every department, to enable easier data tracing, backup and faster retrieval,” explains Dr. Varanyu Suchivoraphanpong, executive vice president, IBank.

Therefore, IBank set out to select an effective data management system with cost-efficiency. After thorough consideration, the bank discovered that storage from Hitachi fit the above criteria.

Solution

The bank decided to install 2 Hitachi Unified Storage (HUS) 130 systems. It placed 1 in its data center and 1 in its disaster recovery center to manage storage and backup on a daily basis. Data can be stored as block files or objects, and backup can be completed every 5 minutes, with flexibility and scalability to serve the future growth rate of data.

Another key decisive factor that made HUS 130 systems the choice for IBank lies in their compatibility with storage technology in the bank’s virtualization environment. For example, HUS 130 can support VMware software, which is installed to enhance the management of virtualized applications.

Therefore, the development of IT infrastructure can be beneficial to all sources. The bank can manage and adjust the storage capacity to effectively serve application requirements, data size and the organizational working environment in the future.

Moreover, Brocade switches are installed to promote the performance of data transfers. And, Hitachi IT Operations Analyzer is included to monitor system performance and solve problems as soon as they emerge.

Outcome

In the future, IBank will adopt the applications to enable knowledge management from data available within its organization from such applications as Microsoft® Exchange. The bank will rely on the seamless compatibility of its HUS 130 systems to allow employees to exchange and share data, and enhance their operations.

IBank will rely on the seamless compatibility of its HUS 130 systems to allow employees to exchange and share data, and enhance their operations.