Al Masraf Digital Transformation with Huawei

More than just a Bank - Al Masraf

In 1975, His Highness Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan issued the federal decree no. 50, forming Al Masraf with the sole purpose of facilitating investment and foreign trade in the region.

Since inception, Al Masraf has been conducting cross-border transactions between the UAE and North African markets, thinking regionally and serving personally. Al Masraf was one of the first corporate banks in the UAE and have always been there to support the creation of prosperity.

Al Masraf is owned by Emirates Investment Authority, as part of the UAE federal government (42.28%), the Libyan Foreign Bank, Libya (42.28%) and La Banque Exterieure d’Algerie, Algeria (15.44%).

In 2020, the world changed forever, so did the needs of customers. Al Masraf prepared for this, adapted and configured its business to serve Al Masraf’s clients better, making them future ready. Al Masraf’s journey is driven by purpose and values, where they understand the needs of the modern world whilst respecting their own traditions, where relationships matter and where diversity is celebrated.

Growing User Populations

With the positive growth over the years, Al Masraf now employs over 400 people in locations across the UAE, including Abu Dhabi (HQ), Al Ain, Dubai, and the other offices in the Northern Emirates. This emphasizes the significance of investing in and establishing reliable infrastructure to support an expanding population.

Managing multiple locations can be challenging at times. The fact that Al Masraf's Wi-Fi solutions ranged from office to office, meant that users and IT technicians were presented with a more complicated infrastructure. Users were restricted to certain areas of the building, and IT technicians had a difficult time implementing necessary updates and addressing intermittent Wi-Fi issues.

The management at Al Masraf intended to implement an enterprise-grade Wi-Fi solution across their full UAE footprint in 2022 as part of their digital transformation. The IT team at Al Masraf aimed to provide everyone who used the company's services in the country access to a unified, reliable, and robust Advanced WiFi-6-based solution. They also believed that, by combining the solution with a cutting-edge provisioning and monitoring platform, they could also anticipate relief for IT operations costs in the long run.

A Next Generation Solution

To address such challenges and keep up with rapidly developing services, the company identified Huawei solutions and products as a great fit for its needs. Huawei has provided a solution that includes switches, Wi-Fi, and a network management system in order to address Al Masraf’s pressing concerns. Huawei performed several workshops and POCs and provided a cutting-edge Wi-Fi solution with 100% coverage in the desired area. The connectivity between access and the core layer is 10G, and access to users is 1G. The network at Al Masraf supports the current requirements and should scale to support further expansions in the future. The below list illustrates the following important services to Al Masraf:

• Latest Wi-Fi 6 Access Points with Huawei’s Smart Antenna Array Technology

• Redundant Unified Management with Huawei iMaster NCE-Campus Platform

• 10G end-to-end with active/active (1/10G) redundant uplinks

• Best practice design with Aggregation Switches

Technology for the future: Huawei has provided AirEngine Wi-Fi 6 Access Points (APs), which is the most advanced available Wi-Fi technology at that time, along with a non-blocking switching platform. Offering ultra-bandwidth up to the Gbit/s level and forwarding latency as low as 10 ms. Support for a rich range of Internet of Things (IoT) standards will meet the needs of various intelligent services. This allows the company to operate its business more efficiently and at greater speed, with better access to resources — anytime, anywhere — helping to boost employee productivity.

Centralized Management: A key service required for this size and distributed architecture is centralized management of all network devices (wired and wireless). Huawei iMaster NCECampus platform can visualize the application traffic of all branches, which therefore allows Al Masraf’s IT team to monitor the dynamic data and adjust the bandwidth of each branch in a timely manner. As an outcome, network traffic can be more easily analyzed with such a system, facilitating network performance optimization.

A Digital Future

The improved Wi-Fi network capabilities of Huawei's solution aided Al Masraf in creating a smart working environment for its employees. With Wi-Fi 6, Al Masraf can rely on constant, everywhere-accessible Wi-Fi. That's because maintaining a constant presence online is essential for any business that wants to foster a culture of increased productivity among its employees. As a result, this solution provides the ultra-high bandwidth, high user concurrency, and low latency necessary to increase user satisfaction and productivity for Al Masraf employees. All in all, Huawei is delighted to be able to work with Al Masraf to create a world where digital technology and intelligence are ubiquitous. Together, Huawei and Al Masraf will build a fully connected, intelligent world during their respective journeys toward digital transformation.

During GITEXGLOBAL2022, Al Masraf and the Huawei team celebrated the success of the bank's campus #network transformation project, powered by Huawei's advanced #Wi-Fi6 solutions.