Bank Sohar as part of efforts to keep pace with its ongoing growth strategy and facilitate the availability of its core banking systems to all customers across business segments has gone ahead with its plans to upgrade technology to improve efficiency and data protection.
The bank has, according to a press release, chosen EMC VNX unified storage from EMC Technologies along with EMC data domain de-duplication storage, a next generation back-up and recovery IT solution.
The bank is currently in the initial stage of deploying EMC infrastructure at its data centre (DC), head office and disaster recovery (DR) sites, along with EMC RecoverPoint to provide point-in-time recovery and online continuous replication between the DC and DR sites.
This new storage area network (SAN) of EMC VNX will enable Bank Sohar to achieve higher levels of performance and efficiency and also meet its RecoverPoint Objectives (RPO) requirements as part of IT DR strategy and business continuity management.
Bank Sohar will manage the infrastructure optimally, reduce operational costs, and increase business agility.
"In line with His Majesty's vision of harnessing IT for all-round development of Oman, the bank's strategy is to successfully integrate IT across the value chain as a key enabler of operational excellence and innovation, creating opportunities and achieving the business objectives.
IT continues to be our key to efficient
banking and services as an effective differentiator. IT has made it possible to improve efficiency both in terms of uptime and the quality of offerings to the customers," said Dr Mohamed Abdulaziz Kalmoor, CEO.
"The SAN project comprises SAN storage at the DC and DR sites, facilitating increased storage capacity; scalability and reliable data consistency at DC and DR; disk-to-disk (D2D) back-up solution, which will facilitate availability of back-up copies in the data centre resulting in shorter back-up and recovery windows for DC-to-DR back-up replication," said Mujahid Said al Zadjali, AGM & head of IT, Bank Sohar.
"To manage and secure its vast amount of information, and ensure seamless business continuity, Bank Sohar needed a storage infrastructure that is efficient, smart and secure.
"The new infrastructure improves systems integration and data centre migration and consolidation, virtualisation, and green IT, thereby enhancing Bank Sohar's customer satisfaction," said Wassim Abi Saab, EMC country manager, Oman.
Bank Sohar selected NCR Oman to implement and support the storage infrastructure as the local EMC partner.
Habib Hanna, NCR Qatar and Oman managing director, said, "This project will be a major milestone in the bank's IT transformation and enable wide ranging business innovations. NCR will be working closely with Bank Sohar to ensure its success.
"NCR will manage the support lifecycle of the systems for the next five years to maintain the highest availability, execute the required systems expansion and upgrades, and help Bank Sohar achieve its business objectives."
© Muscat Daily 2012
