International Data Corporation (IDC) has recognized Alinma Bank for its outstanding IT transformation efforts, by presenting the bank with its “Best Information Transformation” award at the IDC CIO 2018 Awards, which took place recently in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. This year’s award was given in recognition of Alinma’s migration from the industry standard datacenter model, to the more advanced “Active-Active” model.
Speaking about the award Alinma Bank CEO, Mr. Abdulmohsen Al-Fares, said he was pleased to have reached this important milestone.
“The Active-Active model is the gold standard for data center operation, and it is something that we targeted from day one,” said Al-Fares. “With its implementation, Alinma has achieved a major objective in its ongoing IT strategic development, and we anticipate that this move will make Alinma even more capable of delivering best-in-class e-services to our partners as we continue to grow and scale our businesses.”
The Active-Active data center model is a major improvement over the Active-Passive model still in use by many banks. With Active-Passive, banks can only duplicate data at periodic intervals from primary to secondary data centers as part of typical disaster recovery operations. During system failures, this leads to cancelled customer transactions and often significant downtime for e-services.
With the Active-Active model, Alinma has eliminated transactional and operational delays and downtime through the 100%, real-time integration of both its primary and secondary data centers. This allows Alinma to provide its partners (customers) with a more seamless, secure e-service experience, in which system failures no longer impact the completion of transactions or other banking operations.
Founded in 1964, IDC is a worldwide leader in the provision of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. IDC has a presence in over 110 countries, where IT professionals leverage IDC’s analytical expertise to make fact-based technology decisions and to achieve their key business objectives.
Alinma Bank is a service innovation leader in Saudi Arabia, with many key firsts to its name, including being the first bank in the kingdom to implement the Active-Active model. Alinma serves its partners with comprehensive, 24/7, e-channel options that include Alinma Internet (www.alinma.com), Alinma Phone (8001208000), Alinma Mobile (WAP) and the Alinma smart device application. The bank also has a network of 153 branches and more than 1400 ATMs across the kingdom.