ActiveCloud has built a fail-safe cloud cluster for Platezhnye Sistemy (NKT Group)’s automated banking solution, enabling one of Russia’s leading smart technology companies to benefit from a ready-made platform for its online project to create custom-designed bank cards.
NKT Group has operated in the market for plastic cards, terminal equipment and software for the banking sector for over 20 years now. The group’s customers include Alfa-Bank, Bank Vozrozhdenie, Nomos-Bank, Bank Zenit, Bank Saint-Petersburg, Rosselkhozbank and many other banks in Russia and across the CIS.
The company’s new project to make custom-designed plastic cards for banks’ customers is where high tech meets individualized approach. The project makes use of newly developed software offering ample opportunities in online design and modification of cards — from adding any image at customers’ discretion (including personal photos) to the use of transparent materials, holographic components, shaped cuts and tactile materials.
Furthermore, a scalable infrastructure was required to deploy the solution, ensure its fail safety, safe remote access, high speed and independence of communication channels. Based on project requirements, Payment Systems experts made up their mind to have their automated system in the cloud.
“Fail safety and performance are instrumental to the success of such a major project; therefore, we were very serious about choosing our cloud provider,” says Vladimir Strugovets, project manager at Payment Systems. “We made our choice in several stages: first, we sent the project specifications to a few providers, compared their quotes and requested demo access for real-life evaluation of the cloud system. In addition, our key requirement was to ensure at least 99.95% uptime/availability. Our customers are the largest banks in Russia and the CIS, so automation and availability of services shored up by financial guarantees became the crucial criteria for us to pick our provider. We conducted a comprehensive analysis of the quotes and decided in favor of an agreement with ActiveCloud.”
“We were set a very serious and ambitious task,” says Ruslan Raikevich, Deputy General Director for IT at ActiveCloud. “We were required to create a platform devoid of points of failure, which would ensure the highest level of reliability, scalability and security of a customer’s infrastructure. We met the target with flying colors.”
At the heart of Payment Systems’ cloud solution lie two clusters with a load balancer and real-time data mirroring. They ensure uninterrupted operation of the service, because if one of the main cluster machines should fail, its load is immediately dealt with by a similar machine from the backup infrastructure. An online monitoring system has been additionally deployed to monitor the operation of critical services, which sends notifications when limit values are exceeded. The control panel makes it possible to schedule data backups (including the incremental backup option), ensuring their complete safety.
“We are fully satisfied with the implementation: there are no access and performance issues,” Vladimir Strugovets says. “The card design service is becoming increasingly popular, because advantages include not only the image-making component, but also improved security (an owner’s photo on the back of the card will significantly reduce the risk of use by unwanted persons). The load on the servers will naturally grow. That was our additional motive to choose a solution with scalable resources.”
“ActiveCloud is looking to cooperate with companies that use innovative technologies,” says Igor Korman, Director of ActiveCloud. “We are interested in Payment Systems’ project for several reasons: first, it is illustrative in terms of the capabilities of our cloud platform, including in the creation of systems, for which high availability is critical. And second, our companies are notably united by our desire to provide our customers with services that are top-class not only in terms of substance, but also in terms of form.”
