Today’s financial services institutions require secure, robust, available, and fully functioning IT systems that ensure the smooth running of all processes core to the client experience.
A large financial institution, with multiple branches nationally and head offices in Johannesburg, approached Teraco with the key objective of deploying its mission critical systems in Teraco as part of modernising its network to improve uptime, reduce costs, and scale quickly.
The organisation previously faced infrastructure challenges that impacted workflow productivity, operational efficiency, and, ultimately, client satisfaction.
The financial institution redesigned its network within Teraco to support cloud computing, enable seamless connectivity and data exchange, and connect people and data efficiently while improving the performance of its online financial services application.
The Challenge
To effectively address the complex network problems faced, the following operational bottlenecks were addressed by deploying in Teraco:
Internet services
The organisation was tied to one network provider – also known as vendor lock-in. This prevented the company from scaling and choosing best-of-breed and better-performing service providers when needed without high cost and effort.
Remote access
A rapidly expanding workforce, coupled with a need for remote access to applications and data, requires scalable infrastructure and fast, reliable connections.
Location
The physical location of a data centre, and the ecosystem being provided within, has a significant impact on data speeds and latency. It made sense to establish a point-of-presence within a vendor-neutral data centre facility that offered a rich ecosystem.
Uptime
Clients expect online financial services applications to be available 24/7. Any service disruptions can have serious consequences, which made availability and resilience non-negotiable.
Advanced facilities
Traditional server rooms and enterprise-owned data centres have become increasingly costly to maintain, lack the cooling required for high-powered servers, and don’t have the necessary resilience required in today’s operating environment. Colocating within Teraco’s world-class facilities with readily available space, power, and cooling capacity, made economic sense for the financial institution.
Security and regulatory controls
The regulatory constraints around client data have made data centres essential to enterprises looking to comply with local and global information security standards. For financial institutions, regulatory constraints around client data are critical. Serving banking and financial services demands the highest level of security, confidentiality, and adherence to industry standard practice, regulation, and monitoring.
The financial institution required a facility that had the necessary security compliance certifications in place, including PCI DSS, ISO 27001, and ISAE 3402.
The Solution
Before:
The financial institution’s traditional data centre architecture comprised:
- Dual in-house data centres with active-passive failover scenarios.
- Dual internet links to data centres – one for inbound business services and another for outbound internet services.
- An MPLS-based network for retail outlets and business hubs.
After:
A network redesign was developed to support the financial institution’s ICT infrastructure strategy, which included nodes at Teraco’s Johannesburg and Cape Town facilities. A virtualised server infrastructure was deployed at both nodes incorporating routing equipment and perimeter security.
Hybrid infrastructure
The computing and storage for application workloads were migrated to a hybrid infrastructure model, combining the public cloud, private cloud, and traditional infrastructure.
Colocation solution
For latency-sensitive applications that require processing close to the point of delivery, colocating within Teraco’s data centre facilities provides high-speed connectivity, access to the NAPAfrica Internet Exchange, and direct access to public cloud on-ramps.
Fibre interconnects
Direct fibre interconnects were deployed at the different NAPAfrica exchange sites in Cape Town and Johannesburg.
Internet service
A new internet service design was implemented using a public address space owned by the financial institution, diverting 65% of its outbound internet traffic to interconnects at NAPAfrica.
Cost reduction
A planned migration from an MPLS to an SDN-based architecture within Teraco enabled the financial institution to replace costly and unreliable layer two links to branches with a more cost-effective service from a wide range of providers.
Cloud connectivity
Connection to Africa Cloud Exchange (ACX) allowed the financial institution to on-ramp to public cloud platforms such as Microsoft Azure Express Route, AWS Direct Connect, and Oracle FastConnect. This resulted in reduced costs, increased security of connections, and improved latency.
Affordable network costs
Colocating in an ecosystem-rich data centre environment allowed the financial institution to easily cross-connect to suppliers and partners, thereby reducing network costs by over 50%.
The Benefits
Following the success of the project, the financial institution reported several benefits that were crucial to streamlining its national operations:
- Reduced costs to third-party vendors by migrating to interconnect links within Teraco.
- Internet connectivity speed increased by as much as 300% at a lower cost.
- Bringing public-facing applications closer to clients resulted in a faster user experience.
- A three-year forecast following the migration of third-party links and SD-WAN implementation reflected a 30% reduction in operational expenditure.
The transition to Teraco by the financial institution has resulted in enhanced IT services for its staff and clients. Further benefits realised include improved network performance, significant cost savings, an improved overall client experience, and end-to-end visibility over its network.
