Customer Success

Soneri Bank
Introducing a High Availability Banking Infrastructure in Pakistan

Mr. Haider Devjianie takes pride in being a pioneer. As the CIO for Soneri Bank― ORGANIZATION PROFILE

one of Pakistan’s leading financial institutions―he has been instrumental in Website: www.soneribank.com
Industry: Financial Services
introducing one of the first high availability banking infrastructures based on
Headquarters: Pakistan
Symantec technology in the country. Even a few minutes of downtime to the
symantec SolutionS
bank’s mission-critical applications is unaffordable, especially the bank’s ATM Disaster Recovery
network. By automating backup and recovery and introducing application clus- Data Protection
High Availability
tering, Soneri Bank is shielding its 300,000 multichannel customers from the
Storage Management
catastrophe of system failures or disasters―either natural or man-made. The
integrated portfolio of Symantec solutions helps ensure the high availability of
mission-critical applications and systems, particularly the Phoenix ATM switch
and the core banking host. The result? Business continuity, uninterrupted
services to customers in Pakistan and abroad, and measurably greater visibility,
control and flexibility over Soneri’s mission critical applications and storage
environment.

One of the most dynamic financial institutions in Pakistan

Seventeen years after it was founded, Soneri Bank now operates 123 branches across Pakistan, Why Symantec?
including the rural Northern areas of the country. The bank has emerged as one of the most dy-
namic financial institutions in the region, providing customers with corporate, treasury, and retail · Recommendations
banking products and services. The bank is also committed to Shariah-based banking and has a from other CIOs
network of branches dedicated to this business community in cities such as Karachi, Lahore and in Gulf region
Islamabad.
· Proven disaster
Recent terrorist attacks in Pakistan, coupled with a fast-changing and political uncertain climate, recovery capability
have sharpened Soneri Bank’s attention on the need for a robust, reliable disaster recovery strat-
egy. Equally, the ever-present threat of natural disasters―such as earthquakes that sometimes · Relentless
threaten the region―call for contingency plans that ensure the bank’s services can continue to investment in R&D
operate in the event of an incident, regardless of the magnitude. After all, any downtime associ-
ated with a disaster―natural or otherwise―would have a serious detrimental impact on revenues, · Extended support
customer satisfaction, and brand value. in Pakistan
 Customer Success Soneri Bank
All of this was brought into focus as Soneri
Bank has recently achieved several mile-
stones in its journey to create a dynamic,
modern banking service. For example, a cen-
tralized core banking application named
‘SonawareDotNet’ has recently been
launched, which automates many business
processes relating to banking services.
SonawareDotNet has helped accelerate the
processing of banking transactions, while
providing real-time information to the man-
agement for fast decision-making. In addi-
tion, Internet banking provides secure and
user-friendly access to customers’ accounts
anytime or anywhere around the globe, while
the bank’s network of 131 automatic teller
machines (ATMs) support up to 300,000
transactions per month. With an increasing
number of touchpoints and services, it was
of utmost importance that the bank improve
its services uptime.
The crucial factor in all of this was to ensure
the high availability of the Phoenix ATM
switching controller. If the Phoenix switch
were to fail, all ATM transactions across the
Soneri Bank network could potentially grind
to a halt.
Manual approach to data protection
was unworkable
The disaster recovery plan to support these
popular services couldn’t have come soon
enough. Until recently, data backup and re-
covery were performed manually, and when-
ever a server failed, the bank had to manu-
ally restore the data on a healthy server
before bringing it back online. Not an ideal
situation for a 24x7, high quality banking
service. Mr Haider Devjianie, CIO , Soneri
Bank explains why a new disaster recovery
solution was needed so urgently. “Our
backup depended entirely on the operators,”
he says. “There was minimal automation,
and each backup process had to be checked
and verified manually to confirm it had been
completed. The system was insufficiently
reliable, and it was expensive to maintain.”
Mr Devjianie and his team turned to
Symantec. “During my evaluation of the
Symantec technologies, I met with CIOs of
other banks operating in the Gulf region and
found Symantec to be a very popular solu-
SolutionS at a glance
Business Drivers
• Tackle risk associated with natural or
man-made disasters
• Eliminate downtime
• Ensure high quality customer service and
uninterrupted revenue flow
Technology Challenges
• Reliance on operations’ team to manually
backup and restore data
• Ensure uninterrupted availability of core
banking application and critical ATM
switching middleware
Symantec Products
• Symantec NetBackup™ 6.5
• Veritas Storage Foundation™ HA 5.0
Technology Environment
• Endpoints: 2,000
• Operating Systems: Microsoft® Windows®
Server 2003, Sun® Solaris® 9
• Applications: ‘SonawareDotNet’ core
banking and ERP applications, Phoenix
middleware switching controller for ATM
service, ATM monitoring, Internet Banking,
Call Centre, IVR and others
• Servers: More than 100 Windows, and
Solaris servers
• Storage: IBM DS4800 storage area
network (SAN)
Business Value and
Technical Benefits
Disaster Recovery
• Ensured business continuity and uninter-
rupted services to customers
• Met business recovery objectives by
automating backup and recovery
• Moved to proactive management of
business critical banking applications
and databases
High Availability
• Ensured high availability for Core Banking
and ERP applications
• Ensured high availability of bank’s ATM
network, by protecting Phoenix ATM
switching controller
• Introduced application clustering in sup-
port of high availability
• Ensured almost zero data loss
• Automated failover on multiple,
heterogeneous clusters
• Tested disaster recovery plans without
disruption to the business services
• Ensured path failure protection and fast
failover
Efficiency
• Backup performed up to 80% faster using
NetBackup sly
• Centralized management of the bank’s
storage area network
Cost Savings
• Reduced costs associated with expensive
hardware maintenance contracts
• Saved $1,000 per month in administrative
staff time through streamlined backup
Flexibility
• Supported heterogeneous online storage
management
• Provided measurably greater visibility,
control, and flexibility over mission-critical
applications and storage
 Customer Success Soneri Bank
tion. Our primary reasons for choosing
Symantec were the proven capability of their
disaster recovery technology stack, followed
by the quality and breadth of the third-party
references we received on their implementa-
tions. Their relentless investment in R&D
and extended support in Pakistan were other
factors that influenced our decision.”
Symantec was selected to support a large-
scale, varied technology infrastructure―al-
most all of it business-critical. Providing
services to more than 2,000 IT users, it spans
more than 100 servers running Microsoft
Windows Server 2003 (SonawareDotNet ap-
plication), and a Phoenix middleware switch-
ing controller, which underpins the ATM
service and which runs on Sun Solaris 9. Ap-
plications and databases include Citrix
Server, Microsoft Exchange email server, Call
Centre, IVR, Internet Banking, SMS Alerts, a
help desk agent, and utility bill payment
server, together with an Insight ATM monitor-
ing database and core banking database.
Introducing application clustering in
support of high availability
Soneri Bank is partnering with Symantec to
meet its business recovery objectives by au-
tomating backup and recovery, while intro-
ducing application clustering in support of its
high availability strategy. The bank is using
Storage Foundation™ HA to support online
storage management in both its Windows
and Solaris environments. The solution also
enables the centralized management of the
bank’s IBM DS4800 storage area network
(SAN). With Storage Foundation, I/O can be
efficiently balanced across multiple paths for
path failure protection and fast failover,
while storage tiering enables Soneri Bank’s
critical data to be switched to different stor-
age tiers as demand requires.
This high availability (HA) version of Storage
Foundation includes Veritas™ Cluster Server.
This solution automates failover on two clus-
ters (featuring two nodes per cluster) through
Copyright © 2009 Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved. Symantec, the Symantec Logo, Veritas, NetBackup, and Storage Foundation are trademarks or registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its
affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. All product information is subject to change without notice. Part Number 20045800
a Java-based management console: an SQL
cluster using dual IBM x3950 M2 servers for
the SonawareDotNet core banking applica-
tion and a Sun Solaris cluster comprising
SunFire v240 servers for the Phoenix
middleware switch.
The clustering solution also enables the team
to test disaster recovery plans without dis-
ruption to the business services. Simultane-
ously, advanced failover management based
on server capacity allows Soneri Bank to
make the most of its resources by moving
ahead of reactive recovery to the proactive
management of business critical banking
applications and databases.
“Storage Foundation HA ensures the high
availability of Soneri Bank’s mission critical
applications and systems, particularly the
ATM and core banking host, with almost zero
data loss. This provides the business conti-
nuity and uninterrupted services we need to
provide to our customers―in the branches,
over the Internet, or through the ATM net-
work,” explains Mr Devjianie. “In addition,
Soneri Bank no longer needs idle standby
servers to be online and available immediate-
ly―and that reduces the costs associated
with expensive hardware maintenance con-
tracts.”
Simplifying, streamlining, and
centralizing backup management
In tandem with Storage Foundation HA, Son-
eri Bank uses the scalable data protection
solution, Symantec NetBackup™ software.
“Symantec disaster recovery solutions
This is helping to simplify, streamline, and
centralize the management of the diverse
backup environment from one console. The
flexibility of the NetBackup Platform allows
Soneri Bank to customize its data protection
infrastructure, according to its banking ap-
plication requirements. Each of the data
protection, retention, and recovery require-
ments are automated with predefined stor-
age life-cycle policies that correspond to the
necessary service levels.
Soneri Bank is the first bank in Pakistan to
use Symantec high availability solutions for
core banking and middleware switching. And
the solution has been particularly well re-
ceived by the CIO and the rest of the Board.
“The implementation of the Symantec disas-
ter recovery solutions at Soneri Bank ensures
business continuity, uninterrupted services
to our customers, and measurably greater
visibility, control, and flexibility over Soneri’s
mission-critical applications and storage
environment. The robust and reliable solu-
tion also provides data consistency and in-
tegrity at our primary site,” says Mr Devji-
anie.
Although the primary driver was always high
availability and disaster recovery, Symantec
is also boosting productivity. For example,
Mr Devjianie estimates that backup is now
performed up to 80 percent faster using
NetBackup compared with the manual ap-
proach. This is equivalent to a saving of
$1,000 per month in administrative staff
time. He concludes, “This implementation
will not only increase our ROI into the future,
it will also facilitate off-site data backup,
which is very essential to our business. To
mitigate risk, we have already started real-
time replication of our mission critical ap-
plications at our offsite disaster recovery
location and soon the location will be avail-
able as hot backup in Karachi ―and ulti-
mately one in Lahore. Only then we will
breathe a sigh of relief!”
at Soneri Bank ensure business
continuity, uninterrupted services to
our customers, and measurably greater
visibility, control, and flexibility over
Soneri’s mission-critical applications
and storage environment. ”
Mr Haider Devjianie
CIO
Soneri Bank