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Three leading banks go from legacy to cutting-edge
Commercial banks are under growing pressure to modernize their data storage infrastructure to meet growing customer demands, ensure uninterrupted services, and maintain a competitive edge. This article explores how three leading banks—Riyad Bank in Saudi Arabia, Halyk Bank in Kazakhstan, and Yapı Kredi in Türkiye—successfully transformed their data storage systems using Huawei’s cutting-edge OceanStor Dorado solutions. By prioritizing reliability, performance, and scalability, these institutions have not only enhanced their operational efficiency but also fortified their ability to deliver seamless, secure, and innovative services to their customers.
One of the largest banks in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East, Riyad Bank is a leading financier of oil, petrochemicals, and infrastructure projects. It needed to build a data storage system that was open yet secure, as well as being reliable, agile, and easy to maintain.
The first bank in Saudi Arabia to deploy a “three-data-center solution” to meet the requirements of round-the-clock service continuity and disaster recovery (DR), Riyad Bank deployed Huawei’s OceanStor Dorado 18000 in three data centers in Riyadh and Dammam to host production and DR systems. Two data centers were built in Riyadh as “active-active” sites, so that if one fails, another site keeps working without interruption. A third data center was built in Dammam as a remote disaster recovery site. The data centers in both cities are interconnected using a remote replication solution.
Riyad Bank is improving its internal productivity through comprehensive digitalization. It is also transforming its core technology infrastructure and operating models by making them more agile. Looking ahead, Huawei will continue to support Riyad Bank in building a thriving, intelligent future.
With a history that dates back to 1923, Halyk is Kazakhstan’s largest commercial bank, with 16,000 employees in 572 branches and offices nationwide.
In a move aimed at building an entire ecosystem for its customers, Halyk began expanding into digital platforms, including a travel agency, an investment tool, an online market and a ticketing service. This caused online traffic and transaction volumes to surge.
The bank's legacy storage solution relied on mechanical Hard Disk Drives (HDDs), along with a limited number of low capacity Solid-State Drives (SSDs), a combination that could only deliver low performance. To upgrade its storage capabilities, Halyk chose Huawei OceanStor Dorado solutions to manage daily its business activities.
New storage capacity was upgraded by 90 TiB for daily operations and 85 TiB for the core system. OceanStor Dorado's SmartDedupe and SmartCompression features select the most suitable compression algorithm, providing a 3:1 optimization rate. Through these technologies, Halyk has significantly reduced the data storage space it requires, cutting related costs and improving efficiency.
Halyk also implemented OceanStor Dorado storage for its core business, choosing active-active solution and snapshot technology to share information between its two data centers, ensuring that services are always available.
Türkiye’s third-largest private bank, Yapı Kredi was the first bank in the country to offer credit card services to its customers. To maintain its position in the vanguard of credit card innovation, Yapı Kredi planned to increase its customers’ use of cards and Point-of-Sale (PoS) terminals and enhance their overall experience.
But as its customer base grew, traffic soared, straining the bank's legacy infrastructure. Yapı Kredi clearly needed a storage system that could meet the newly increased workload.
In particular, it needed storage that was immune to the risk of downtime, which compromised banking services and alienated customers.
After evaluating a range of options, Yapı Kredi chose Huawei’s OceanStor Dorado, a solution that delivers performance of up to 21 million Input/Output Operations Per Second (IOPS). Designed to meet the demands of core enterprise services, it also boasts 99.9999% reliability, tolerating the failure of seven out of eight controllers.
The bank chose two identical storage systems of eight controllers each. One system was installed in Istanbul, the other at a geographically separate Disaster Recovery (DR) site.
The Huawei storage systems provided the high performance and availability required to keep pace with the bank's growth. In addition, the OceanStor Dorado high-end all-flash storage systems enabled data reduction capabilities which reduced the bank’s TCO by 40% compared the traditional storage.
The case studies of Riyad Bank, Halyk Bank, and Yapı Kredi demonstrate the transformative impact that upgraded storage technology can have on financial institutions. By embracing advanced technologies, these have not only addressed their immediate challenges but have also positioned themselves for future innovation and success. As the demand for robust, scalable, and secure data storage continues to grow, Huawei’s solutions stand out as a reliable partner for banks navigating the complexities of the digital age.
