FIRST BANK OF NIGERIA LTD
Leading bank improves customer service with
EMC solutions
OVERVIEW
First Bank of Nigeria Ltd (FirstBank) is the country’s largest financial services
company, serving its eight million-strong customer base through over 750
nationwide branches, as well as online services, with its global reach. FirstBank
provides prospective investors wishing to explore the vast business opportunities
that are available in Nigeria an internationally competitive world-class brand and a
credible financial partner.
The Bank has been named “The Best Bank Brand in Nigeria” three times in a row—
ESSENTIALS
Industry
Financial services
Company Size
16,000 employees
Challenges
•
Aging storage systems lacked
performance to support high level
of customer service or
virtualization plans
•
Tape backup systems put data at
risk, lacked performance, and did
not support DR processes
Results
•
Improved performance by 300
percent
•
•
•
2011, 2012, and 2013—by the globally renowned “The Banker Magazine” of the
Financial Times Group.
FirstBank’s brand purpose is to always put its stakeholders, customers, and partners
at the heart of its business, even as it is poised to standardize customer experience
and excellence in financial solutions across Sub Saharan Africa. FirstBank's brand
vision is 'to be the partner of first choice in building your future.' The brand promise
is to always deliver the ultimate gold standard of value and excellence. This
commitment is anchored on FirstBank’s inherent values of passion, partnership, and
people, to position its customers first in every respect.
BUSINESS CHALLENGES
To consolidate its position as Nigeria's leading financial institution, FirstBank
embarked on a strategy to continually improve customer service levels, reduce risk,
and meet compliance requirements. But as a result of increasing business
development dynamics, the company's aging backup systems and storage
infrastructure could not deliver the performance, reliability, or scalability needed to
support the bank's commitment to innovation.
Mission-critical applications, including Finacle core financial solutions, were
performing poorly with unacceptable latency periods. End-of-day transaction
Reduced backup times from more
processes were taking up to eight hours. In addition, staff compute queries could
than 24 hours to zero
take minutes rather than seconds. And email generated with Microsoft Exchange
Shortened RTO from days to one
could take a full day for delivery. Also, the storage solutions did not support the
hour
company's plans to be fully virtualized.
Reduced data risk while enabling
FirstBank's legacy tape backup systems only had the capacity to protect a small
compliance
percentage of the bank's hundreds of terabytes of data. But despite this, backups
were taking in excess of 24 hours and restores could take days. The backup systems
could also not protect vital data held on thousands of company laptops.
CUSTOMER PROFILE
Solutions
•
FirstBank could not maintain high levels of data availability in the event of a failure
EMC VMAX 20K and 40K enterprise
and did not possess the comprehensive DR processes required to fully comply with
storage
regulations. These issues were compounded by the fact that the company's primary
and secondary data centers were located 800 kilometers from each other. Limited
•
EMC FAST VP
•
EMC SRDF
•
EMC Isilon scale-out storage
•
EMC Data Domain
•
EMC Data Protection Advisor
of our performance and backup issues," says Kayode Oladipupo, CIO, FirstBank. "We
•
EMC NetWorker
chose EMC because we recognized the company as a leader and innovator in its field,
•
EMC Avamar
which matched our own mission of innovation and leadership."
•
EMC SourceOne
SOLUTIONS
•
EMC Centera
FirstBank deployed a fully integrated solution from EMC to improve performance,
•
VMware vSphere
•
Microsoft Exchange
bandwidth meant that it was difficult to replicate data between the two sites.
To address these issues, FirstBank considered proposals from EMC and other
technology providers.
"EMC provided us with a proof of concept, demonstrating that we could overcome all
minimize risk, and increase customer service levels. Two EMC® VMAX® 20K enterprise
storage systems were installed at the company's primary and DR data centers. The
company also refreshed its original VMAX systems to VMAX 40K for increased storage
capacity and even higher performance.
Continuous, automated data replication between storage platforms using EMC SRDF®
provides the foundation for comprehensive disaster recovery. The bank utilizes
VMware® vSphere™ for virtualization and has already achieved more than 90 percent
virtualization. It has virtualized many mission-critical applications, including its ATM
systems and Microsoft Exchange for increased agility and lower costs.
"Staff working in our branch and corporate offices have
instant access to data, which significantly improves our ability
to serve both internal and external bank customers. With
EMC, we have seen transformational performance increases
that enable us to achieve our objectives."
Kayode Oladipupo
CIO at First Bank of Nigeria
FirstBank also installed EMC Isilon® scale-out storage for cost-effective storage of flat
files and utilizes EMC Centera® for low-cost archiving for older files. EMC FAST™ VP
provides automated storage tiering.
FirstBank replaced its tape backup systems with a comprehensive EMC backup and
recovery solution. EMC NetWorker® unified backup and recovery centralizes and
automates backup processes. In addition, EMC Avamar® deduplication backup
software and system provides backup and recovery for the company's 700 virtual
machines and data stored on 2,000 company laptops.
EMC Data Domain® provides FirstBank with a centralized backup storage target to
protect all block, file, and virtual data. Also, EMC Data Protection Advisor automates
monitoring, analysis, and reporting across backup and recovery environments for
added confidence. And EMC SourceOne™ Email Management archives all emails
generated by the company's Microsoft Exchange system.
IMPROVING CUSTOMER SERVICE
Since deploying its EMC solutions, FirstBank has improved overall storage
performance by more than 300 percent, enabling the company to improve the service
it provides to its customers. End-of-day transaction processes have been reduced
from eight to three hours and staff compute queries that took minutes now take
seconds. In addition, email delivery occurs instantly.
"Staff working in our branch and corporate offices have instant access to data, which
significantly improves our ability to serve both internal and external bank customers,"
Oladipupo states. "With EMC, we have seen transformational performance increases
that enable us to achieve our objectives."
The improved performance is not only due to VMAX, but also because of EMC FAST
VP. FAST VP automatically migrates hot in-demand application data to flash drives for
high IOPS performance. Then when demand cools, it is moved to less expensive
drives or other storage systems, including Isilon.
PROVIDING COMPLETE DATA SECURITY
FirstBank decommissioned its aging tape backup systems and now protects almost
100 percent of its data with EMC solutions for continuity and compliance. Avamar and
Data Domain have reduced backup times due to automated, continuous backup and
restore processes. RPO is now zero and RTO for corrupted files is only one hour.
Avamar and Avamar DTLT back up 700 virtual machines stored in EMC storage
infrastructure and also reduce risk by protecting 2,000 company laptops and the
critical data that they hold.
Combined deduplication ratios using Avamar and Data Domain are 7.76X, helping to
speed the backup process across limited broadband resources while also reducing
required backup storage. And NetWorker centralizes backup and restore
administration with a single and unified management system.
The company also completely transformed its disaster recovery processes using EMC
solutions. Because SRDF continuously replicates data between primary and secondary
VMAX systems, FirstBank can automatically fail over to the working VMAX in the
event of a failure, ensuring continuous data availability. Working with EMC, the bank
also moved its DR data center to a location only five kilometers from its primary site
for increased security and performance.
SourceOne Email Management helps to ensure compliance by securely archiving all
email. In-built eDiscovery functionality enables staff to locate critical internal and
customer email communications instantly if ever required.
"We now have a highly stable, fully reliable, and high-speed backup and disaster
recovery capability because of our decision to adopt innovative EMC technologies,"
Oladipupo states. "That decision significantly reduces risk and secures our important
data."
INTEGRATED SOLUTIONS IMPROVE BUSINESS
Oladipupo strongly recommends the bank's integrated EMC solutions.
“I recommend EMC to anyone hoping for improved performance and high quality
backup and replication capabilities," he says. "All of these benefits enable FirstBank to
respond quickly to our customers’ needs, improving the customer experience."
CONTACT US
To learn more about how EMC
products, services, and solutions
can help solve your business and IT
challenges, contact your local
representative or authorized
reseller—or visit us at
www.EMC.com.
EMC2, EMC, the EMC logo, Avamar, Centera, Data Domain, FAST, Isilon, NetWorker, SourceOne,
SRDF, and VMAX are registered trademarks or trademarks of EMC Corporation in the United
States and other countries. VMware and vSphere are registered trademarks or trademarks of
VMware, Inc., in the United States and other jurisdictions. © Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All
rights reserved. Published in the USA. 06/14 Customer Profile H12857
www.EMC.com
EMC believes the information in this document is accurate as of its publication date. The
information is subject to change without notice.