Heavyweight Indonesian Bank Chooses Huawei Storage to Power Indonesia's Financial Sector

PT Bank Central Asia Tbk, commonly known as Bank Central Asia (BCA), is one of the most important commercial banks in Indonesia. Founded in 1955, this storied company is today the largest privately-owned bank in the country and was named Best Indonesian Bank for 2022 by global media company Forbes. It was also announced as the Best Bank in Indonesia by Global Finance magazine.

With over 1200 branches nationwide, supported by 17,000 Automatic Teller Machines (ATMs), BCA offers a wide range of services to individuals and businesses alike, including savings and current accounts, loans and credit facilities, investment and insurance products, and online banking. It also has special programs tailored to specific customer segments such as students and small businesses.

Across the board, the bank is committed to providing excellent customer service and has, accordingly, long invested heavily in technology to improve efficiency, security, and convenience. So, as Indonesia's economy continues to grow, BCA is clearly well positioned to continue playing a key role in the country's financial system and wider economy.

BCA's vision is explicit in this regard — it aims "to be the bank of choice and a major pillar of the Indonesian economy" — and has defined its mission to match this ambition.

• To build centers of excellence in payment settlements and financial solutions for businesses and individuals.

• To understand diverse customer needs and provide the right financial services to optimize customer satisfaction.

• To enhance corporate franchise and stakeholder value.

High-performing storage unlocking the power of data

Digital banking is now, of course, an important facet of what every bank provides. "Over the years, we have invested in technology and innovation," explained Ferdinan Marlim, Senior Vice President (SVP) for Information Technology (IT) System Infrastructure at BCA, "to ensure that our customers can access our services from anywhere and at any time of the day."

The popularity of mobile-first banking is clear and the benefits it brings undisputed: customers big and small therefore now expect extremely high levels of convenience. But the banking apps so critical to making this a reality require powerful support in the back end, with fast, uninterrupted database access key to efficient operations. The faster data flows and the lower the latency, the quicker the real-time reaction in an app's front-end interface, significantly enhancing the user experience.

With all of this in mind, clearly understanding what it wanted to achieve, BCA chose Huawei OceanStor Dorado all-flash storage for its latest upgrade. The solution provides 257,862 achievable Input/Output Operations Per Second (IOPS) with latency as low as 1 ms, supporting a massive number of seamless in-app real-time transactions.

After deploying its new solution, BCA's app user retention rate has increased by 3%, like-for-like, suggesting that it is better meeting the needs of users, providing additional value without any new features actually being added. It would appear, therefore, that this increase is solely attributable to improved storage performance.

Storage powers data analytics and delivers more actionable insights

With BCA's business growing, the bank also found itself needing additional storage capacity for its business analytics platform. This platform involves the use of data-driven tools and techniques to analyze various aspects of operations and performance, such as that user retention rate.

In a mobile-first world data security will always be key and BCA also relies on advanced analytics to detect fraudulent activities and transactions, using models that identify suspicious behavior patterns then quickly notify related bank staff. The system is also trained to recognize unauthorized logins, based on Internet Protocol (IP) addresses and suspicious password modifications, working quickly to freeze affected accounts.

The algorithms that drive such sophisticated analytics require substantial computing power, also generating a huge amount of data. All of this must be stored. Again, it's Huawei's OceanStor Dorado all-flash storage series that is now providing BCA with 153 TB of usable capacity, meeting its needs over the next five year. Providing extremely high data availability and advanced data reduction capabilities, the OceanStor Dorado solution is supporting BCA's analytics work, in turn helping it to manage and mitigate risks across all operations. Plus, with data now driving more precise customer segmentation, user behavior analysis delivers real, actionable insights.

Reliable storage is crucial for the smooth functioning of business operations

For any storage solution, reliability and Disaster Recovery (DR) capabilities are also critical to boosting efficiency and pushing up customer satisfaction.

With BCA choosing two sets of OceanStor Dorado all-flash storage, the first was installed at its main data center site. The other was deployed as a DR center. Dedicated resources in each location are designated specifically for backup. Such architecture provides data-level failure protection for services, seamlessly integrating with the bank's preexisting backup application. It also provides system-level failure protection: when the main data center is down, the DR site takes over, meaning users experience zero interruption to services. And that's a clear recipe for success.

BCA Mobile, the banking app dedicated to their customers, has received recognition for its exceptional features and overall quality. Additionally, the newly implemented storage solution is now offering all users seamless and secure access to banking services.

Equipped with its OceanStor Dorado solution, BCA has been empowered in several ways. It allows the bank to make better decisions — informed by real data insights — in turn enhancing the customer experience and improving operational efficiencies, in order to stay highly competitive in an increasingly data-driven marketplace. And this project also marks the very first time all-flash storage has been deployed in the financial industry in Indonesia, surely a strong indicator of what direction the industry is now heading in and what the future holds.