China Everbright Bank Logo
Industry: Banking & Financial Services
Location: China
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China Everbright Bank transforms IT systems for next generation services

Highlights

  • Cuts total cost of ownership for production systems.
  • Guarantees high availability and scalability for mission-critical systems.
  • Eliminates risk of vendor lock-in, reducing risk and fostering innovation.
  • Offered an easy and successful migration path from UNIX to Linux.

Products

Established in August 1992, China Everbright Bank is headquartered in Beijing and was founded under the approval of the State Council and the People’s Bank of China. China Everbright Bank delivers comprehensive financial products and services to its clients. At the end of December 2015, the bank had grown to cover 108 major cities in 29 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions, with 38 primary sub-branches (including Hong Kong), 68 secondary branches and 1,048 banking outlets. The bank employs over 40,000 people. By December 31, 2015, the bank’s total assets reached 3,167.71 billion Chinese yuan, with total liabilities of 2,943.663 billion Chinese yuan. China Everbright Bank was ranked number 57 among the world’s top 1,000 banks nominated by British magazine, The Banker, in 2015.

At-a-Glance

To support ongoing growth and facilitate strategic objectives in China’s continuously evolving economy, having reliable, secure, high-performance systems is critically important for China Everbright Bank. To support business development, improve its IT capabilities and reduce its operating costs, the bank is expanding its use of SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) — actively embracing open source software and enhancing its technology capabilities.

The Challenge

The Chinese economy and financial services industry are constantly evolving, put ­ ting pressure on all banks in the country to continuously update their operations to adhere to regulations and keep serving the economy as its requirements change. Keeping up with these changes cost­-effectively is a constant challenge for China’s leading banks.

Qiubo Zou, Linux Technical Staff at China Everbright Bank, said: “We hold our technology to exceptionally high standards. As the foundation for our 24x7 customer services, our core business systems must be reliable and secure, with ultra-­high performance.

“Before our production systems go live, they must go through rigorous testing to ensure that they are fully compliant with our requirements. Any new technology has to be stable and reliable, and to justify the expense of the testing process, it must be able to reduce our costs and improve our production efficiency.”

In light of the challenges involved in implementing new technology, how could China Everbright Bank improve its IT capabilities to keep up with the rapidly evolving requirements of the financial industry without exposing itself to excessive costs?

“SUSE Linux Enterprise Server provides stable and reliable support for various x86 servers and it is a good fit for the database, middleware and third party software we run on it, providing a good user experience.”

SUSE Solution

China Everbright Bank is replacing elements of its proprietary UNIX landscape with x86 open architecture servers—and the bank is choosing SLES as its primary operating system.

“To reduce our IT costs, we are actively moving from UNIX ­based midrange computers to a common architecture of x86 servers running Linux,” said Qiubo Zou. “SLES provides stable and reliable support for various x86 servers, and it is a good fit for the software we run on it, providing a good user experience.

“SLES has always been the obvious choice for us; it’s the most mature and popular Linux release on the market for enterprise customers. It has the capabilities and flexibility to support our business and meet all of our requirements around compliance and security, and we can be confident that SUSE will continue to update it as technology evolves.”

China Everbright Bank is using SLES to support its online banking applications and other internet­ related systems, middle office systems, and more.

“We’re also taking advantage of SUSE’s expert maintenance and support services,” said Qiubo Zou. “If we have a problem, SUSE sends an engineer on site to help us identify and address the issue, enabling us to solve production problems quickly and provide our customers with continuous high-­quality services.”

The Results

With SLES, China Everbright Bank is improving productivity and cost-­effectiveness.

“The large­-scale move to commodity x86 servers with SSLES has reduced our bank’s production and operating costs,” said Qiubo Zou. “I estimate that we are saving more than 50 percent. SLES is also helping us take advantage of big data and cloud technology solutions.

“What’s more, we are no longer at risk of vendor lock ­ in. We can freely run SLES on any standard x86 hardware, so different vendors can compete to offer us the best­ value deals. And as an open platform, SLES gives us freedom to use third-­party and open­ source software, such as OpenStack and Docker.”

Additionally, process standardization based on SLES has improved consistency throughout the bank. With every branch following the same workflows it is easy to identify and enforce best practices in IT, leading to significant productivity improvements.

Qiubo Zou said: “We are very pleased with SLES. It enables us to quickly and easily respond to the needs of the business, and leverage open­ source software, so that we can offer customers a superior experience very cost-effectively.”