BisB is Standardizing on Nutanix as it Continues to Set New Benchmarks for Islamic and Digital Banking in Bahrain
Established as the first Sharia-compliant bank in Bahrain, Bahrain Islamic Bank (BisB) continues to pioneer the sector and has been championing the digitization of the BFSI segment in the Kingdom. This has meant not only introducing new digital conveniences for customers, but also establishing an impressive IT infrastructure that its industry peers now aspire towards.
Key Results
| Performance hits new peaks | Backup now a breeze | Mitigated maintenance headaches |
|---|---|---|
| 70% improvement in the performance and availability of critical workloads | 90% increase in the speed of backups which now complete in a matter of minutes | Provisioning time for databases reduced from 5 days to under an hour, and maintenance resource requirements cut by 75% |
In Nutanix, we have found that rare technology partner that is uncompromisingly committed to our bank’s long-term success. We have every intention of completely standardizing our infrastructure on Nutanix, so that we can get the value of other solutions available in their industry-leading portfolio.
Challenge
From its heritage as Bahrain’s first Islamic bank, Bahrain Islamic Bank (BisB) continues to ‘challenge the ordinary’ through innovation and continuous development. It’s no surprise then that ‘Digitization’ is one of the five pillars on which the bank has built its acclaimed brand.
Being the sector’s vanguard requires BisB to constantly invest in its IT infrastructure which is the rock-solid foundation on which its innovations are built. So, when it became evident that traditional physical servers and storage were no longer up to the bank’s loft performance benchmarks, and that maintenance was drawing resources away from innovation, a decision was made to give this environment an overhaul.
Solution
While it is committed to advancing its digital transformation at pace, as one Bahrain’s most reputed banks, BisB isn’t an organization that’s ready to risk its reputation by forgoing due diligence. So, although it was well aware of the trust other leading regional banks had placed in Nutanix, it was committed to thoroughly testing the vendor’s solutions for itself.
“We ran Nutanix in our test environment for a whole year which gave us a deep understanding of its impressive capabilities, and a firsthand experience of its incredible performance and reliability,” said Ali Adel, Leader of Database Services at BisB. "With this, we had full confidence to invest in the whole suite of solutions from Nutanix including Nutanix Database-as-a-Service (NDB), Nutanix Files, Nutanix Data Protection and Nutanix AHV."
Customer Outcomes
No More Provisioning Pains
Overhauling its IT infrastructure with Nutanix has translated to a huge reduction in the time required to provision databases. “Where previously we needed up to five days to provision a database cluster, we can now have this up and running in under an hour. So, if a business unit wants to develop and test a new application, we can rapidly support them, which ultimately means our bank can get innovations to market sooner,” said Adel.
Moreover, where the bank once required up to four dedicated engineers to carry out database provisioning, it now allocates just a single resource. “The impact on our ability to innovate is profound. These are precious IT manhours that we can redirect to high-value initiatives that drive business growth,” said Adel.
New Performance Peaks
Equally if not more important have been the performance improvements seen following the Nutanix implementation. The performance of critical workloads such as Microsoft SQL that have been migrated to Nutanix has increased by an impressive 70%.
Customer Confidence and Convenience
Given the industry that BisB operates in, another significant benefit that Nutanix has brought has been the enhancement to the bank’s backup and recovery capabilities. With performance having increased a whole 90%, the bank’s backup window has been reduced to mere minutes. “This exceeds regulatory requirements and gives our customers confidence that their hard-earned finances are safe, and protected against the threat of cyber-attacks,” said Adel.
In addition to mitigating the threat of unplanned downtime, the ease of management and expansion of the Nutanix environment has also eliminated the need for planned downtime. “Previously, when we wanted to scale our environment, we had to add physical servers and storage – a process which required shutting down systems,” said Adel. “Now with Nutanix, there’s no such limitation and increasing compute or storage capacity is simply a matter of a few clicks. As a 24x7 operation that’s under immense pressure to offer customers uninterrupted access to our banking services, this is a game-changer.”
No Trouble with Troubleshooting
While the performance and ease of management of Nutanix’s solutions has impressed all stakeholders at BisB, for the IT team, the ‘best part of Nutanix’ shines through when they face challenges with other vendors.
“Whether it's our Oracle or Microsoft databases, Nutanix is already ready to step up to the plate and take full ownership of troubleshooting. So now instead of multiple tickets and complicated remediation efforts, we have a single support case that’s rapidly resolved by Nutanix’s world-class support team,” said Adel.
Next Steps
“Partnering with Nutanix was definitely the right decision for our bank. Their solutions and support will enable us to offer seamless banking experiences to our customers for the next decade,” said Adel.
“In Nutanix, we have found that rare technology partner that is uncompromisingly committed to our bank’s long-term success. We have every intention of completely standardizing our infrastructure on Nutanix, so that we can get the value of other solutions available in their industry-leading portfolio,” said Adel..