TMBThanachart Bank Optimizes Data Infrastructure with an All-Flash Data Center Solution

A User-Friendly Digital Platform Is Critical

Thailand's sixth largest bank, TMBThanachart Bank (ttb), was born in 2019, the result of a merger between Thai Military Bank (TMB), which specialized in savings' management and transactional banking, and Thanachart Bank, a retail bank recognized as a leader in auto loans and car financing. Today, ttb is one of just six Domestic-Systemically Important Banks (D-SIBs), meaning that it's critical to the country's overall financial stability and the well-being of its economic system.

Reflecting the combined expertise and strengths of its two predecessor banks, ttb's 'Make REAL Change' brand slogan succinctly summarizes its corporate philosophy, a vision to genuinely improve the lifelong financial well-being of its customers by delivering truly personalized financial counselling, products, and services through a reliable and user-friendly digital platform.

In this spirit, to answer the emerging needs of its customers and head-off the challenges tomorrow will bring, Information Technology (IT) is regarded by ttb's management as a key enabler, one that must grow in scope, side-by-side with its business ambitions.

Integration Without Disruption

A key part of the merger, which was completed in July 2021, involved integrating the banking infrastructure of ttb's predecessors, including all IT systems. It was important, of course, to minimize the impact to ttb's customer base during the transition period, but it was vital to establish a common IT system for diverse legacy infrastructure, one that could provide stability, reliability, and security.

With the merger completed and data volumes only set to expand, ttb then began to look for a new high performance storage solution, one that would be capable of handling massive data, using highly efficient technology to guarantee security and prioritize cost effectiveness.

At that time, Huawei was a new IT supplier for ttb and, competing against leading players in the market, it proposed a solution that went well beyond ttb's expectations. Indeed, Huawei's solution not only met all of the bank's initial needs, it also factored in support for future IT expansion: no new equipment will need to be purchased when that time arrives.

Improved Performance, Lower Costs

Huawei proposed a high-end all-flash storage solution featuring End to End (E2E) Non-Volatile Memory express (NVMe) architecture, which delivers improved performance and ultra-fast data processing speeds.

This system also uses active-active architecture, enabling two storage systems to process services simultaneously, establishing a mutual backup relationship: if one storage system malfunctions, the other automatically takes over without data loss or service interruption.

Huawei's solution features Redundant Array of Independent Disks Triple Parity (RAID TP), a specialized disk array mode that supports the simultaneous failure of three Solid-State Drives (SSDs) while continuing to deliver performance, reliability, and high-capacity utilization. In addition, the system's Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) technology reduces Central Processing Unit (CPU) bottlenecks.

Offering state-of-the-art performance — with 60% lower latency and 25% higher computing power than the industry average — Huawei all-flash storage sets unprecedented standards for reliability and speed. It also helps to simplify Operations and Maintenance (O&M), in turn reducing IT costs.

The Front-End Services Success Is Built On

The Huawei storage solution now in place brings a range of business advantages and notable benefits to ttb.

A high performance system with a significant reduction in latency has been obtained at a good purchase cost. Data traffic now flows freely without slowdowns or any downtime.

Business continuity is also guaranteed with mutual backup between data centers and Fully redundant hardware components. Data protection is similarly assured and new levels of resiliency have been added.

Perhaps most importantly, fast and secure front-end services are now always available to all of ttb's customers: this is the critical digital foundation that any bank must own if they are to achieve success.

With such high performance data storage infrastructure in place, ttb is now fully equipped to pursue its business development goals, especially through its mobile app, which has become the bank's biggest source of data and a way for it to interact and engage with its customers around the clock. This, in turn, is helping the bank to fulfill its bold mission, to improve the lifelong financial well-being of every customer, today, tomorrow, and far into the future.