ActiveCloud by Softline announces the successful completion of its project to transit the IT infrastructure and business applications of Embafinans, a leading player in the Azerbaijani lending market, to the cloud. The project enabled the company to cut its IT costs and automate services for its customers.
Embafinans LLC has provided lending services since 2012. The organization has a network of more than 100 offices and employs over 200 people across the country. Since the start of this year the company has provided over USD 20 million worth of loans.
The company’s rapid growth required a consistent expansion of its IT infrastructure, which would enable the lender to provide quality services and maintain the top customer service speed.
“Embafinans has always focused on the convenience of its services supplied to customers. Our organization provides loans through its own network of POS, which are located in stores across Azerbaijan. There are more than a hundred of them now. Rapid business growth has brought about the need to optimize our IT infrastructure and move to more powerful automation tools. In 2013, this issue became our top priority,” says Nijat Hajiyev, Marketing Specialist at Embafinans.
To effectively address this issue, in early 2013, the company started planning its transition to a new system for automating the lending process. Its implementation called for enhanced infrastructure capacity. Specifically, it was necessary to build and equip a new server room, as well as to purchase state-of-the-art equipment. Having analyzed the volume of planned operations (construction, power supply, installation of air conditioning systems, purchase of servers and licensed software), and also having calculated all costs, including the period required to implement the project, costs of hiring new IT specialists, etc., Embafinans decided in favor of an alternative — to take the IT infrastructure to the cloud. The company studied the offers from the leading cloud providers.
“We were choosing cloud suppliers based upon two main criteria: first — the price and quality, second — the level of support. The offer from ActiveCloud by Softline proved to be the most exciting option, in terms of both of our criteria. Time has proved that we made no mistake: ActiveCloud’s technical specialists built an infrastructure in the cloud that fully meets the requirements of our projects, as well as provided extensive technical support and undertook increased availability commitments as part of the SLA Premium package. An important factor in choosing a supplier for us was the fact that Microsoft recommends ActiveCloud by Softline as its gold partner,” says Farhad Gadiev, Lead IT Specialist at Embafinans.
Embafinans’ entire IT infrastructure is deployed on ActiveCloud by Softline’s two geoindependent cloud platforms, which are used for the operation of the state-of-the-art Softgenic Loan Workbench credit system in various parts of Europe. The first cloud is the main one — it is home to the company’s lending system, SQL and Web server. The second one is used for backups, both local and remote.
In addition, the company uses ActiveCloud’s virtual hosting. The customer’s website is still under development, and once it has become operational, it will only perform informational functions. However, the company plans to launch online services that will be integrated with the main system and protected by the highest level of security. Afterwards, it is planned to integrate the website with the existing cloud infrastructure.
Near future plans for cooperation between Embafinans and ActiveCloud include the introduction of the 1C system in the IT-partner’s cloud, as well as the connection of another backup server in the European cloud. The system is already set up and is currently being tested.
“Embafinans experts’ approach to solving problems is constructive and highly professional, and this greatly simplifies and accelerates all business processes. The introduction of the cloud technology into our business is stepwise and complies with all test periods and recommendations of our specialists. As we can see, this helps the credit company to grow rapidly and achieve success,” says Vitaly Myakshinov, Lead Manager at ActiveCloud (ActiveHost RU LLC).
