Founded in 2005, Beijing Rural Commercial Bank (BJRCB) provides a broad range of financial products and services to individuals and companies across all 182 districts of the city. The bank operates a network of 694 branches and manages assets worth 522.2 billion Chinese yuan.
At-a-Glance
To ensure superb availability for its critical systems, Beijing Rural Commercial Bank relies on SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server (SLES). Investing in premium support from SUSE means that the bank can solve technical problems much faster than before, and with less effort. In addition, the company has achieved a significant cost saving compared to its previous server and operating system platform and has cut IT administration requirements.
The Challenge
As demand for innovative financial products and services heats up, BJRCB has seen the number of applications it provides to internal users swell from 50 to 134 in the last five years.
To support this massive growth, the company needs an IT platform that can provide excellent performance and reliability. It also has a critical need to keep costs firmly under control to maintain its competitive edge.
Nian Liu, System Administrator at BJRCB, said: “If our systems go down, we risk being unable to provide services to our customers and incurring severe reputational damage. In fact, prolonged downtime could even spark action from industry regulators. It is therefore imperative that we select IT platforms that deliver outstanding stability.
“When a new government policy restricted the purchase of products from our previous vendor, we took the opportunity presented by an infrastructure refresh to optimize costs and boost service quality.”
“We are so happy with the high-quality technology and brilliant support provided by SUSE that we have decided to develop all new applications on the platform.”
SUSE Solution
BJRCB decided to migrate a number of its business-critical systems to the SLES operating system. BJRCB also invested in premium SUSE support to help its IT team manage the platform more easily.
“Moving to SLES has presented several major advantages,” said Nian Liu. “First, it takes just an hour to set up the operating system on a new server. Because the installation process is simple, we can complete it without help from SUSE.
“Second, many system management processes are automated. This means that our infrastructure is less susceptible to problems caused by human error, and that we save time on system administration. Also, automation makes it easier to ensure that our systems are compliant with the tough regulations imposed on the banking industry.”
He continued: “Thirdly, the SUSE platform is extremely reliable. In our experience, it’s more stable than Windows, as we rarely need to restart the systems. Having such high levels of availability makes it much easier for us to keep our critical systems up and running.”
The Results
Switching to SLES has unlocked enormous benefits for BJRCB’s IT team.
Nian Liu said: “SLES is extremely easy to run and maintain. By moving to the platform, we have cut the time spent on IT administration noticeably. That’s a huge advantage, because our IT team is small, and our success depends on our ability to work efficiently.”
Furthermore, enterprise-class support from SUSE gives the IT team peace of mind that its critical systems are in good hands.
“The support we receive from SUSE is excellent,” said Nian Liu. “If problems occur, we can call a hotline or senior engineer, and help will arrive on-site within four hours. Because the SUSE staff are experts in their field, they are able to solve problems extremely quickly. Problems are resolved faster than before, and our in-house team spends less time on troubleshooting. Resolving errors quickly helps us avoid downtime for our critical systems and provide better service to our customers.”
Also, whenever BJRCB plans to make changes to an important system, SUSE sends engineers to help the bank’s IT team complete the modifications quickly and seamlessly.
Nian Liu said: “In the past, we’ve been disappointed by the premium support services offered by major technology vendors, as their engineers have arrived late and been unable to solve the problem. With SUSE, we don’t have those issues.”
Critically, switching to SLES has enabled BJRCB to substantially reduce IT overheads.“We have achieved a significant cost saving compared to our previous proprietary server and operating system platform,” said Nian Liu. “Major savings like this help us to compete more effectively against rival banks, strengthening our position in the market.
“We are so happy with the high-quality technology and brilliant support provided by SUSE that we have decided to develop all new applications on the platform.”