EastNets was formed in 1984 and is a business partner of SWIFT in the Middle East. Hazem Mulhim, chief executive officer spoke to Paul McNamara
Disaster recovery is becoming of increasing relevance to banks in the region. How do you help banks cope?
Our disaster recovery offerings provide banks with the opportunity to restore operations in the event of an unforeseen system hardware or software failure caused by natural disaster, power failure or technical failure. We offered disaster recovery connectivity from a customer's disaster recovery site to the SWIFT IP network through our service bureau. Then we expanded our disaster recovery offering by providing financial institutions with a range of solutions starting from disaster recovery hosting to fully managing customer's disaster recovery. Because there are many methods of disaster recovery planning that vary in complexity, time to recover and cost, we also provide disaster recovery consultancy to address customer specific disaster recovery requirements. To explicitly address disaster recovery, we maintains two duplicate infrastructure environments, one located in Dubai, UAE and another located in Istanbul, Turkey.
EMV is here to stay and banks now know this. How does Instant Issuing fit in with this development?
Instant Issuing is a new solution that enables banks to comply with EMV standards. Through the our service bureau, banks can outsource their card processing to the us. With Instant Issuing, banks can reduce their total cost of ownership and meet the EMV compliance deadline. We already serve over 400 banks in the broader Middle East region and currently provide outsourcing services to more than 50 banks through our service bureau.
Bank customers are all different. How can Kiosk Solutions help banks service customers better and more cost effectively?
We realise that all customers have a different requirement, which is why we offer each bank a unique kiosk solution. Our kiosk solution is one of the delivery channels currently used by banks to extend their reach to customers. Our banking kiosk solution is a pioneering solution for the banking industry. The banking kiosk system combines the functionalities supported by both phone banking and internet banking; in addition it provides direct video conferencing service with the call center agent. The various capabilities of the kiosk allows for the delivery of functionalities beyond the reach of any existing standalone system. Through our kiosk solutions, banks can increase their services more cost effectively and thereby reach many more customers.
How much take-up has there been in the region for banks to outsource their connectivity and infrastructure needs to players like EastNets?
Just a year after we established our outsourcing unit, we provided outsourcing services to 17% of the banks in the Middle East region. We believe this is a great achievement in only one year of operations. The IT outsourcing trend by the banking industry to outsource some of its functions to a trusted and secure third party like ours allows banks to focus on their core competencies and therefore enhance their services. Banks choose to outsource to our service bureau because it is in a highly secure network and physical environment, audited annually by SWIFT, has a fully redundant infrastructure to support customer service level agreements and reduces overall total cost of ownership. Our service bureau not only provides connectivity and infrastructure, but also hosts and fully manages various solutions for banks and other financial institutions.
© Banker Middle East 2005
