28 April 2003
Eastern Networks has recently announced that it will be providing banks in the UAE, Qatar, Pakistan and Jordan with a High Availability/Data Replication (HA/DR) solution tailor made for them that will ensure that a safe and reliable copy of the SWIFTAlliance database is always available. Having evaluated various solutions in the market, Eastern Networks selected software based on Legato's Co-Standby and Octopus software, as the best solution recommended for SWIFTAlliance users.
High-Availability is a mandatory feature for the growing list of mission-critical applications. Unbroken information access is essential to a company's business success. Virtually any amount of IT downtime can mean lost productivity, lost revenue, lost customers, lost opportunities. That means banks need to be prepared for the full range of threats to the availability and stability of their core infrastructure. Threats ranging from communications disruptions, application problems, and unexpected peaks in customer traffic, to full-scale disasters.
Traditionally, high-availability was provided through specialized fault-tolerant hardware, which is very expensive, or clustering software, which requires expertise to implement and manage. Eastern Networks has provided banks with a cost-effective, simple to deploy, high availability solution, which requires no changes to the application. In addition, it does not require clustering software, does not require additional or specialized hardware, and will demonstrate significant value in a very short period of time.
In the event of a failure of the primary system, Eastern Networks' solution ensures that the SWIFTAlliance application and database automatically transfer onto the backup. The Hostname and Internet Protocol address are also moved to the backup server, eliminating the need for reconfiguration of other systems or workstations. Within 5 minutes, the system can be fully operational, users and applications connecting, and messages being sent and received.
"The impact on a bank's business if SWIFTAlliance becomes unavailable is often severe. A solution such as the one we are proposing protects the business by mirroring the SWIFTAlliance application and data from the production machine to a standby server," said Hazem Mulhim, CEO of Eastern Networks. "In the event of the production server or the SWIFTAlliance application becoming unavailable, the Legato-based software will enable the banks to continue operating because they have prepared for the unforeseen. The real time mirroring technology provided in this solution ensures that whatever data exists on the production server will exist on the standby server, thus ensuring data integrity," he added.
The other part of Eastern Networks' proposed solution includes data replication. We all hope that disaster will never strike, particularly when it involves mission critical applications such as SWIFTAlliance. However, if the worst should happen, wouldn't it be reassuring to know that even in the event of a complete site failure, a safe and reliable copy of your SWIFTAlliance database is available for immediate use?
By maintaining a remote mirror of the database, the data replication software ensures rapid recovery from even the most catastrophic disaster. The software captures changes to the SWIFTAlliance data and copies them to one, or many, recovery servers, which can be located either in-house or at remote sites across any local or wide area network. The solution provides a flexible approach to disaster recovery, allowing banks to implement a unilateral strategy for different locations without hardware or network dependency.
Implementing this solution would enable the disaster recovery server to have all the information on the primary as of the last update. Disaster risk would hence be reduced from more than 24 hours to less than 1 hour, depending on the update frequency.
-Ends-
Editor's Note:
http://www.eastnets.com Eastern Networks has been a pioneer in introducing data integration and communication technologies throughout the Middle East for the past 20 years. From PC to WAP based solutions, the company has actively and consistently continued to build on its reputation as a major reliable technical partner, with a wide range of international partnerships. In addition to being banking application developers and the SWIFT Business Partner for the Middle East, Eastern Networks is also a Microsoft Certified Partner and is the Authorized Distributor for Equant Integration Services in 28 countries. Eastern Networks provides web-enabled Delivery Solutions packages that include proprietary applications raseed-e Phone Banking, atheer-e WAP Banking, daleel-e Call Center and bitaqat-e Secure Card Issuing. Eastern Networks' regional operations are managed through offices in Amman, Jordan; Dubai Internet City, UAE; Istanbul, Turkey and Sofia, Bulgaria.
Eastern Networks has recently announced that it will be providing banks in the UAE, Qatar, Pakistan and Jordan with a High Availability/Data Replication (HA/DR) solution tailor made for them that will ensure that a safe and reliable copy of the SWIFTAlliance database is always available. Having evaluated various solutions in the market, Eastern Networks selected software based on Legato's Co-Standby and Octopus software, as the best solution recommended for SWIFTAlliance users.
High-Availability is a mandatory feature for the growing list of mission-critical applications. Unbroken information access is essential to a company's business success. Virtually any amount of IT downtime can mean lost productivity, lost revenue, lost customers, lost opportunities. That means banks need to be prepared for the full range of threats to the availability and stability of their core infrastructure. Threats ranging from communications disruptions, application problems, and unexpected peaks in customer traffic, to full-scale disasters.
Traditionally, high-availability was provided through specialized fault-tolerant hardware, which is very expensive, or clustering software, which requires expertise to implement and manage. Eastern Networks has provided banks with a cost-effective, simple to deploy, high availability solution, which requires no changes to the application. In addition, it does not require clustering software, does not require additional or specialized hardware, and will demonstrate significant value in a very short period of time.
In the event of a failure of the primary system, Eastern Networks' solution ensures that the SWIFTAlliance application and database automatically transfer onto the backup. The Hostname and Internet Protocol address are also moved to the backup server, eliminating the need for reconfiguration of other systems or workstations. Within 5 minutes, the system can be fully operational, users and applications connecting, and messages being sent and received.
"The impact on a bank's business if SWIFTAlliance becomes unavailable is often severe. A solution such as the one we are proposing protects the business by mirroring the SWIFTAlliance application and data from the production machine to a standby server," said Hazem Mulhim, CEO of Eastern Networks. "In the event of the production server or the SWIFTAlliance application becoming unavailable, the Legato-based software will enable the banks to continue operating because they have prepared for the unforeseen. The real time mirroring technology provided in this solution ensures that whatever data exists on the production server will exist on the standby server, thus ensuring data integrity," he added.
The other part of Eastern Networks' proposed solution includes data replication. We all hope that disaster will never strike, particularly when it involves mission critical applications such as SWIFTAlliance. However, if the worst should happen, wouldn't it be reassuring to know that even in the event of a complete site failure, a safe and reliable copy of your SWIFTAlliance database is available for immediate use?
By maintaining a remote mirror of the database, the data replication software ensures rapid recovery from even the most catastrophic disaster. The software captures changes to the SWIFTAlliance data and copies them to one, or many, recovery servers, which can be located either in-house or at remote sites across any local or wide area network. The solution provides a flexible approach to disaster recovery, allowing banks to implement a unilateral strategy for different locations without hardware or network dependency.
Implementing this solution would enable the disaster recovery server to have all the information on the primary as of the last update. Disaster risk would hence be reduced from more than 24 hours to less than 1 hour, depending on the update frequency.
-Ends-
Editor's Note:
http://www.eastnets.com Eastern Networks has been a pioneer in introducing data integration and communication technologies throughout the Middle East for the past 20 years. From PC to WAP based solutions, the company has actively and consistently continued to build on its reputation as a major reliable technical partner, with a wide range of international partnerships. In addition to being banking application developers and the SWIFT Business Partner for the Middle East, Eastern Networks is also a Microsoft Certified Partner and is the Authorized Distributor for Equant Integration Services in 28 countries. Eastern Networks provides web-enabled Delivery Solutions packages that include proprietary applications raseed-e Phone Banking, atheer-e WAP Banking, daleel-e Call Center and bitaqat-e Secure Card Issuing. Eastern Networks' regional operations are managed through offices in Amman, Jordan; Dubai Internet City, UAE; Istanbul, Turkey and Sofia, Bulgaria.
© Press Release 2005
