01.04.2008 /Who's who
 Address of Marat Kh. Khairetdinov at the Neoflex IT-Conference
Marat Kh. Khairetdinov
Vice President - IT Department Director
Evrofinance Mosnarbank, Moscow | In my opinion, a switch-over by a bank to a service-oriented architecture (SOA) shall not be an end in itself however compelling it may be. Such a switch-over shall be economically viable. It is unwise to draw up an outline of the bank’s IT infrastructure from the ground up in accordance with the SOA approach and then to spend money on its implementation. It is much more expedient not to redevelop the existing links within an operating IT system, but to implement new IT products in the framework of SOA. It goes without saying that new software shall be used to meet specific needs of the bank’s business and each installed product shall yield results. Thus, first, we’ll gradually – step by step – switch into SOA and attain the final objective and, second, we’ll demonstrate to the Bank’s top management that a service-oriented architecture is a tool which provides an opportunity to achieve bankers’ business goals swiftly and efficiently.
The IT landscape of Evrofinance Mosnarbank, Moscow, consists of a number of IT systems including an in-house-developed ABS. Connections among operating IT systems have been developed by a number of suppliers. The Bank used both on-line connections and file exchanges. Maintenance of such connections requires massive efforts: heavy expenses and detailed description in the in-house documents of all such connections. This is even more the case when rapidly changing business processes shall be maintained. All this makes difficult further progress and development of the Bank’s IT system. Thus, we took a decision to switch into SOA gradually and to implement all the new software in the framework of SOA.
Relying on an integration software platform we have integrated the master ABS, a remote banking services system for individual customers and a retail banking system. By unifying all IT-services we eventually plan to build a fully-fledged integrated system based of this architecture. This will enable us - if and when necessary, smoothly and with minimum costs - to replace obsolete elements in the Bank’s IT architecture.
As is known, integration software is offered by a wide spectrum of vendors. Thus, while choosing an integration software platform the Bank focused on the market leaders which offer a complete product line required for IT system creation in the framework of SOA. Moreover, the Bank’s IT systems run on many platforms: IBM DB/2 400, Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle. Keeping in mind perspective challenges, the Bank looked for a comprehensive and powerful solution.
As a result we chose the IBM WebSphere integration software platform: IBM has a large share in the integration software market, offers an up-to-date product and has a number of distributors in Russia experienced in implementing integration software platforms. Among consulting companies which offer WebSphere in the domestic market our choice was Neoflex Company which has implemented the platform in a number of Russian banks. The projects carried out by the company in the Bank have proved correctness of our choice: all of them were implemented timely, within anticipated costs and with good quality.
The first step was the implementation of the retail banking system. In my view, first to install such a large-scale system and only then to try to ensure its ‘proper’ integration is a pure waste of time and money. Moreover, without a scaleable integration of the system a company risks to get a ‘jury-rigged’ version – based on file interchanges, direct access to database tables and etc. – as its permanent IT system. These considerations are even more important due to the fact that the Bank operates a rare configuration of the retail banking system: we had to integrate a CFT-Retail Bank system with our in-house-developed ABS. Such combination created additional difficulties in automation of tax reporting and extraction of data to the data warehouse. That’s why the integration platform fitted well into the Bank’s IT landscape and in my opinion the whole retail project would have been under threat (especially against the background of rising volume of transactions) if the integration platform had not been implemented.
The second project carried out by us was implementation of the remote banking services system which processes all the transactions executed by the Bank’s individual customers with the only exception of payments in foreign currencies. The integration software enabled us to effect exchanges of customers’ personal data, information on the balances held in their accounts with the Bank, transaction details and documents between the remote banking services system and the retail banking system.
Now we study the market of retail CRM systems to choose a system to be implemented by the Bank (in addition to a CRM system for corporate customers already in operation). No doubt, while implementing it the Bank will rely on the existing integration software to integrate the CRM system, the ABS and the data warehouse.
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