Banking Production Centre (BPC) and IBM have announced the launch of a joint strategic initiative that will offer best-in-class payment processing application functionality for banks. The alliance predominantly involves the BPC SmartVista transaction switching solution being adjusted to run in IBM’s iSeries native environment. BPC’s SmartVista Suite is a comprehensive, state-of-the-art family of closely integrated software applications designed to cater for the needs of organizations involved in the processing of electronic payments based on plastic cards and other personal payment tools.
“In today’s banking environment, IBM iSeries technologies offer distinctive capabilities that allow financial organizations in the Middle East to set a new benchmark for convenient, flexible and reliable financial services,” said Wael Abdoush, Manager of Systems and Technology Group, IBM Middle East, Egypt & Pakistan. “The SmartVista iSeries solution delivers the benefits of the best-in-class payment processing application functionality on a secure solid foundation of IBM software and hardware technologies, all with controllable, predictable and manageable cost of ownership.”
SmartVista is designed to support all existing international EFT standards and technologies, including EMV and is open to extend to other emerging or local electronic payment mechanisms.
“With the increase of global payments and transactions, the requirements for systems that provide the highest levels of performance, security and availability are essential,” commented Anatoly Loginov, CEO and President, BPC. “Many financial institutions and card processors in Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific are now evaluating alternative platforms to replace their aging legacy systems that fail to keep up with the pace of change being demanded in the marketplace.”
“This challenging period of change makes the SmartVista iSeries solution an ideal offering for the organizations worldwide seeking to rely on an open-ended future-proof processing platform.“
Upon the completion of the project the SmartVista iSeries solution will be marketed to target segments and customers worldwide, both by IBM’s industry-largest sales force and through BPC’s regional offices and channel partners.
“The combined BPC/IBM offering is complemented by the products from selected best-in-class vendors that bring unique high-availability middleware features. This multilateral cooperation will further extend the whole value proposition surrounding the availability of the SmartVista iSeries solution by making it even more robust and efficient,” concluded Loginov.
Through the IBM/BPC initiative, BPC is porting its SmartVista transaction switching system (SmartVista Front-EndTM) to the IBM native iSeries environment provided by DB2/400 database and i5/OS 400 operating system. All development activities, including application development and testing, optimization and tuning, and staff training, are supported by IBM dedicated consultants from the UK and Russia.
The first phase of the project covered the porting of SmartVista database structure and objects to DB2 8.2., and the reengineering of the user interface and implementing it on WebSphere Application Server Express 6.0 in compliance with the three-layer thin-client architecture. The acceptance testing at IBM Innovation Centre for Business Partners in Moscow was completed in March 2006 and allowed to release the business prototype for the marketing demonstration of the SmartVista ATM switch functionality.
Following the thorough study of IBM OS400/i5 capabilities and the relevant pre-implementation development, BPC is now engaged in the porting of C/C++/ProC SmartVista Front-End modules to native OS400/iS and the adopting of the system for use with DB2/400. The system acceptance testing at IBM Innovation Centre for Business Partners in Moscow scheduled on August 2006 will be followed by the benchmark testing and tuning at IBM Rochester (USA) that will result in the official launch of the SmartVista iSeries solution.
The SmartVista solution run on IBM OS400/i5 with use of DB2/400, and supported by highly secure eServer iSeries technologies, will provide a proven fault-tolerant platform to authorize and process debit and credit card transactions from ATMs, POS-terminals and other service delivery channels. The SmartVista iSeries solution combines scalability, flexibility and continuous availability to provide financial institutions worldwide with a robust platform that can handle ever-increasing transaction volumes from a variety of access points.
About BPC
BPC is a leading provider of IT solutions for the retail financial services industry focusing on EFT, international and local card processing, self-service banking, retail banking and consumer lending, e-business and customer relationship management. BPC is now part of BPC Group with the corporate headquarters in Moscow (Russia) and branch offices in Amsterdam, Singapore, Dubai, Jakarta, Manila and Kiev.
BPC’s customer base includes the largest and most progressive retail banks of Russia, CIS and Asia Pacific, among them Savings Bank of Russia, Gazprombank, Alfa Bank and ING Bank (Eurasia) in Russia, TuramAlem Bank and Kazakh Railways Company in Kazakhstan, UkrSibbank BPN Paribas Group and Bank Khreschatik in Ukraine, Security Bank Corporation and OneCard International in the Philippines.
The BPC SmartVista Suite is a comprehensive, state-of-the-art family of closely integrated software applications designed to cater for the needs of organizations involved in the processing of electronic payments based on plastic cards and other personal payment tools. SmartVista has been designed to support all existing international EFT standards and technologies, including EMV, and is open to extend to other emerging or local electronic payment mechanisms.
More information about BPC and the SmartVista Suite is available at: www.bpc.ru/eng, www.smartvista.biz.
