CASE STUDY
REPUBLIC BANK GHANA AT A GLANCE
Challenge
• Slow data recovery was causing 10 – 12 hours of downtime for core banking system every day and impacting customer service
• Needed an enterprise platform to quickly back up and restore data from the existing heterogeneous environment
• Previous backup process was ad hoc and lacked visibility into the data recovery status
• Mandated to comply with the strict data retention requirements of the banking industry
Solution
• Adopted Commvault Complete Data Protection as the single solution to automatically back up and recover data for all the systems across the bank
• Commvault Partner Tenece Professional Services provided support in proof of concept and project management with the Commvault team installing the software
Result
• US $ 375,000 savings in CAPEX compared to using other competitive solutions
• Improvement of RPO and RTO from up to 24 hours down to one and up to six hours respectively
• 80 % more efficient to manage the entire backup and recovery process
• 45 % increase in online transactions due to zero downtime
• Gained 85 % deduplication ratio for core banking database and saved storage capacity
• Improved customer satisfaction by using a reliable and secure backup solution
• Faster response to regulator queries and meeting compliance requirements
Banking services
• Leading financial institution in Ghana provides universal banking services , including retail and commercial banking , corporate , mortgages , investment and microfinance
• Customer service is the bank ’ s top priority
• Total assets as of September 2020 : GHS – 3.66 billion ( US $ 626 million )
Key assets protected
• Multiple databases from various vendors
• MySQL
• File servers , emails and virtual machines
• 10TB of data backed up daily
The backup environment
• Commvault Complete Data Protection
“ Commvault Complete Data Protection allowed us to integrate with our existing systems and back up everything in one platform . This actually saved us US $ 375,000 in CAPEX over one year .”
According to Dakurah , what makes Commvault really stand out is not just the product itself but also their level of commitment and technical expertise . “ For instance , the Commvault team would go the extra mile and give us advice on areas that were coming from our database and storage system during the proof of concept . This was something that other vendors wouldn ’ t do ,” he said .
Even after the solution went live , Dakurah and his team know that they will get the support when needed .
“ Commvault has been in the data protection business for a long time . Once you get the solution set up , it works . You can go to sleep and expect that Commvault is going to do what it ’ s supposed to do ,” he said .
Reducing RPO and RTO by up to 96 %
Republic Bank had no enterprise backup platform in place before , so the backups were done in an ad hoc manner . The RPO was 24 hours and took 12 hours to restore data , causing serious disruption to banking services . “ Because of the long RTO and RPO , we had to shut down our core banking system for up to 12 hours every day and take backups once a day only . This negatively affected the availability of online channels – Internet or mobile banking – and ultimately , the services to our customers ,” he added .
“ Today with Commvault Complete Data Protection , we have reduced our RPO to just one hour and RTO to four to six hours instead of up to 24 hours . Downtime is a thing in the past and online channels are now available 24 / 7 . Customers are also happier .”
Dakurah added that : “ With zero downtime , we ’ ve seen a 45 % increase in online transactions since we moved to Commvault . It means that a lot fewer customers visiting our branches . That ’ s a significant cost savings to the bank , and a big convenience to our customers .”
Improvement in backup efficiency
After adopting Commvault Complete Data Protection , Republic Bank has seen drastic improvement in efficiency by automating the backup and recovery process . “ With Commvault , I know once my backup is taken , I ’ m getting a copy in my Disaster Recovery site . All we need to do is to take the backups out , label it and ship it offsite ,” Dakurah explained .
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