Meezan Bank Selects Oracle to Help Reduce Cost, Enhance Customer

Service and Prepare for Growth

Meezan Bank, the largest Islamic bank in Pakistan with a network of over 160 branches in 40
cities, has chosen to build its consolidated IT infrastructure based on Oracle applications and
technology to address the growing demand for Shariah-compliant banking services in the country.
Meezan Bank plans to integrate its core operations into a centralized system on the reliable, high
performance, highly available and scalable Oracle Database platform.
The bank chose Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) and Oracle
Enterprise Manager to power its core banking application on the Oracle Database platform.
Oracle Applications, including Oracle E-Business Suite Human Resource Management System
(HRMS) and Oracle E-Business Suite Financials will provide Meezan Bank with an integrated
view of its HR and financial information to help in the bank’s decision-making process while
significantly reducing the cost of operations.
In addition, Oracle E-Business Suite HRMS solution will enable the bank to manage its HR on a
single system of record while complying with local laws and regulations. It will enable the bank
to forecast, track and manage its work force more efficiently, enabling them to cut cost, increase
productivity while attracting, retaining, and motivating a superior workforce.
Oracle RAC provides continuous uptime for database applications, eliminating downtime for
Meezan Bank’s core banking users with its high availability and load balancing capabilities.
Meezan Bank will use Oracle Enterprise Manager as an integrated management solution for
managing Oracle databases, in order to reduce or eliminate time-consuming, error-prone
administrative tasks, so that the bank’s database administrators can focus on strategic business
objectives instead of performance and availability fire drills.
Finally, Oracle Data Guard will provide Meezan Bank with robust database protection for its core
banking application. It will also serve as a critical component of the bank’s business continuity
strategy, enabling the bank to replicate critical data from its primary site to disaster recovery site.
Oracle partners, IBM Global Business Services and Ora-Tech Systems, are the partners
responsible for implementing the solutions.
Supporting Quotes
“To cope with our aggressive expansion plans, it became necessary for us to select a user- friendly,
functionally-rich, cost-effective, real-time banking solution that would help meet market needs
and demands,” said Mr. Irfan Siddiqui, President and CEO, Meezan Bank. “Oracle provided us
with the best solution that can give us a scaleable, highly-available infrastructure platform for this
solution; helping us in our growth and business requirements.”
“This consolidated IT solution based on Oracle technology and applications will definitely help us
to serve our customers better,” said Mr. Ariful Islam, Chief Operating Officer, Meezan Bank. “It
will provide us with a solid platform to meet our expansion targets more aggressively by
minimizing operational costs.”
“Banks around the world and also in Pakistan rely on Oracle to help them streamline business
processes, meet increasing regulatory compliance demands and improve cost efficiency ratios,
while providing greater value to customers,” said Farhan Ibrahim Chaudhry, General Manager
Sales (Technology Business), Oracle Corporation, Pakistan and SAGE (W). “We are happy to
support Meezan Bank in their endeavour to enhance customer service and to expand.”
"Meezan bank has chosen a powerful set of software solutions from Oracle to enable them in their
business. Ora-Tech Systems is honoured to support Meezan Bank through our experienced
professionals. As the premier Islamic banking institution in Pakistan, Meezan Bank will now be
able to grow its Middle East’s Islamic Banking Network while providing top-notch service to its
existing customers," said Mr. Farhad Fatakia, Director, Ora-Tech Systems.
Meezan Bank Ltd., the largest Islamic bank in Pakistan, is using Oracle Exadata Database Machine
to cut the close of business time by 30 percent. Meezan Bank was also able to reduce their data
center footprint by running their core banking database on Oracle’s flagship engineered system.

The bank was using third-party software for its core banking application and in order to keep up
with its fast-paced growth it needed to upgrade its hosting platform. Meezan Bank wanted to
enhance the reliability and performance of its technology platform, which had increased its
operating expenses due to rising licensing cost and the price to performance ratio on the previous
hardware was significantly higher.

The organization opted for Oracle Exadata Database Machine, a purpose built, highly optimized
integrated platform for running the Oracle Database. Exadata features database-aware intelligent
storage and workload-optimized algorithms that run Oracle Database faster, more reliably and with
greater security than other platforms. As a result, the operating costs and total cost of ownership
of Exadata is significantly lower than alternatives.

By successfully deploying its core banking database on Oracle Exadata, the bank has been able to
significantly lower its software licensing requirements and shrunk its close of business time by 30
percent while using 30 percent fewer cores. Moreover, the bank has lowered its administrative
efforts by reducing the data center footprint and managing the hardware and software end-to-end
using a single Oracle Enterprise Manager console.

“We needed a highly available and high performance platform to host our core banking application
supporting our rapid business growth and branch network expansion while keeping administrative
tasks and operating expenses to a bare minimum,” said Faizur Rehman, CIO, Meezan Bank Ltd.
“Oracle Exadata Database Machine is the platform that has provided us with the required
scalability at a reduced total cost of ownership with return on investment expected in just three
years.”

“Banks in Pakistan are increasingly adopting Oracle Exadata Database Machine to run their core
banking applications and experiencing significant performance enhancements,” said Waqas
Hashmi, country sales director – technology business, Oracle Pakistan and Afghanistan “Meezan
Bank reaping benefits from the engineered system is yet another testament to the value that Oracle
Exadata Database Machine delivers to organizations and helps them stay ahead of competition.”

The account was won by Oracle in April 2015 and went live in February 2016. The implementation
was jointly managed by OraTech, a Platinum-level member of the Oracle PartnerNetwork, and
Oracle Advanced Customer Support, who were actively involved in every phase of the project.
Both organizations paid close attention to details during the planning which enabled the smooth
and seamless migration to Oracle Exadata. The bank did not encounter a single hiccup during
production cut-over and all its services were functional 24/7.