SCIENCE

IBM has announced that two leading Russian banks, Rosbank and Alfa-Bank, have selected IBM POWER7 Systems to manage millions of data-intensive transactions and analyze that data in real time, helping to improve customer service while reducing data center costs.

Alfa-Bank will use its two new POWER7 servers to build an automated reporting system based on IBM DB2 to allow the bank to draw insight from vast amounts of data and help anticipate emerging business trends. The POWER7 servers at Alfa-Bank deliver four times the performance of their predecessors, while reducing energy consumption by 60%.

"Alfa-Bank has a ten-year history of using IBM's Power Systems to support business growth. During this period our customer base has grown to 40,000 corporate and 4.1 million private clients and our branch network has grown to 340 branches and offices across Russia and abroad," said Artem Shakhverdyan, deputy head of Alfa-Bank's Integration Systems Office. "At Alfa-Bank, it is crucial that our technology investments scale in line with our accelerated growth - POWER7's unprecedented performance and virtualization capabilities meet our bank's business development needs for the next four years."

The system at Alfa-Bank was implemented by Diona Holding, an IBM business partner in Russia.

Rosbank, another leading player in the Russian banking sector, bought two POWER7 servers running AIX, IBM DB2, IBM WebSphere and IBM InfoSphere DataStage software.

The new systems will enable Rosbank to implement a new CRM system which will provide a 360-degree view of the customer. The systems will draw insight from large quantities of transactional data, enabling Rosbank to improve service and optimize its offerings and sales channels. It will also optimize the performance of a number of other existing analytical tasks.

"We are committed to implementing powerful IT solutions which help us to automate and improve complex business processes," said Olga Skorobogatova, Deputy Chairman of the Management Board of  Rosbank. "IBM POWER7 systems offer an excellent cost/performance ratio and provide a powerful tool to draw insight about customer trends and improve our competitive position."

Rosbank's migration to the new systems is due to be complete by the end of fourth quarter, 2010 and the new system will be deployed for 1,500 users across the company by the end of 2011.

"Companies are turning to IBM's Power Systems not only to drive efficiencies, cut costs and better manage their operations, but also to run advanced analytics to gain insight into business trends and improve their competitive position," said Andrey Filatov, STG Leader, IBM Russia/CIS. "IBM's customers benefit from innovative technologies, long-term investments and a stable roadmap."

IBM also recently announced that Russian pharmaceutical distributor PROTEK replaced its previous HP servers with IBM POWER7 systems for its data processing center. In June this year IBM also announced that National TRUST Bank bought five IBM POWER7 servers to support the reorganization of its branch and office network across Russia.

In the first three quarters of 2010, IBM concluded nearly 800 competitive migrations to IBM Power Systems globally. Over the past four years, nearly 3,000 companies around the world have switched from the competition to IBM Power Systems.