Disaster recovery management: NBP enters into deal with IBM

Outsources disaster recovery to Big Blue due to lack of internal resources.

KARACHI:

Following in the footsteps of other financial institutions, including the top three banks, the National Bank of Pakistan – the largest commercial bank operating in the country – has outsourced its disaster recovery management to IBM.

The deal comes as NBP lacks resources to internally manage disaster recovery sites on different locations. Since the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has stringent requirements for disaster recovery, the bank has shifted risk management to IBM, one of the largest multinational technology and consulting firms in the world, called ‘Big Blue’. The agreement was signed in the second quarter of 2011.

IBM Pakistan Country Sales Manager Adnan Siddiqui said: “Our data centre facilities are not only cost-effective for companies, but also offer international-level business continuity and disaster recovery services to organisations.”

He explained that other than the seven financial institutions which have outsourced risk management to IBM, they have 16 other customers which included corporate clients from diverse fields.

The business continuity and resiliency services (BCRS), which the NBP has outsourced, will ensure uninterrupted services and protection of crucial data in the event of a disruption. IBM manages 165 data centres across the world.

“National Bank of Pakistan took a landmark initiative in June to consolidate all the 12 regional centres into a centralised location. To mitigate the risks of having all the data in a centralised environment and to have proper disaster recovery and business continuity we selected IBM BCRS,” said NBP Chief Information Officer Mahmood Siddiqui.

The IBM solution will equip NBP with an improved processing capability, enable it to run core banking and payment solution applications with round-the-clock availability and help it meet challenges of any site issues through a disaster recovery setup. IBM will also make available a highly sophisticated IT infrastructure.

“Companies are increasingly turning to IBM’s business continuity and resiliency services to plan, implement and manage IT operational risk management strategies,” said Siddiqui, who explained that this would help reduce the impact of particular risks to NBP.



Published in The Express Tribune, July 28^th, 2011.