Red Hat SummitRed Hat (NYSE: RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that Bank PHB, one of Nigeria’s top ten banks, has migrated its core mission-critical banking applications to Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform. Bank PHB migrated to Red Hat’s open source solutions to achieve the next step in scalability, performance and the ability to handle heavy workloads and achieve cost reduction more effectively than with other proprietary software platforms.
Bank PHB has emerged as one of Nigeria’s fastest growing banks with 1.8 million customers, making it the eighth largest bank in the country by both profitability and size. The bank has one of the most innovative financial product portfolios in the region and with its recent acquisition of Gambia’s International Bank for Commerce (IBC) it has even more plans to grow. To facilitate this growth successfully, Bank PHB required an IT solution that is based on open and flexible architecture, with higher performance and manageable total cost of ownership. It also desired a solution with no proprietary lock-in in order to allow the bank to integrate all of the different banking applications and products from its varied acquisitions.
Bank PHB, with the assistance of Red Hat Advanced Business Partner, Qrios, has migrated to a cluster of commodity hardware, including 23 IBM x86 X3850 multi-core servers. The servers are now equipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1, which replaced the previous IBM eServer pSeries servers that ran Unix AIX. The full solution incorporates IBM Intel servers running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1, built using the JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform, including the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform on the web front end to provide a highly-available client by implementing the clustering, caching and fail-over capabilities of JBoss. Bank PHB also uses Red Hat Network Satellite and JBoss Operations Network to monitor and manage updates. The new Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers all run the Temenos T24-core banking application that is built on an open architecture and uses established standards such as HTTP, XML and J2EE for a variety of banking modules including retail, private banking, treasury and Islamic banking.
“Migrating our systems to Red Hat and JBoss solutions was a strategic choice for us”, said Henry Okoede, chief technology officer at Bank PHB. “Cost saving was not the only reason we went with open source, though it was certainly icing on the cake. Our decision was driven by the fact that Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform provide constant innovation and the flexibility that enables us to develop products that we can launch to market faster, while making sure that all our systems are fully integrated and optimized to communicate with each other flawlessly. We have also felt that the service provided by Red Hat professional support was also one of the best we have ever experienced with a vendor.”
“The communication and middleware tier had to be able to support the total bank community with acceptable response times and guaranteed delivery of messages to the Temenos T24-core banking application”, said Mosh Adetoro, director at Qrios. “Bank PHB chose JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, including JBoss Messaging, a Java Message Server (JMS), to ensure delivery of the messages to the core application.”
“Bank PHB Bank is another great example of how open source provides real value for our financial services customers”, said Werner Knoblich, vice president of the EMEA region at Red Hat. “JBoss technology, combined with professional support from Red Hat, has enabled PHB Bank to deploy an enterprise-ready robust platform that meets both the performance and reliability demanded by the financial sector, with the major advantage of flexibility provided by open source.”
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About Bank PHB
Bank PHB, a leading financial services institution is Nigeria’s emerging icon for banking excellence. Our strategic intent is to build a national and diversified franchise by creating superior value for all our stakeholders through unrivaled customer service experience, superior shareholder value, a conducive workplace, and commitment to corporate citizenship.
Bank PHB has emerged as one of Nigeria’s fastest growing banks with profit before tax of N10.28 billion, total assets and contingents of N480 billion as at June 2007 making it Nigeria’s eighth biggest bank in profitability and size, and seventh biggest bank in deposits. It is significant that Bank PHB since its merger in December 2005 has maintained an average growth rate that is about three times the banking industry average growth rate.
http://www.bankphb.com/live/general/index.php
About Qrios
Founded in 1998, Qrios is West Africa's major Linux and open source service provider. As a Red Hat Advance Partner, it provides support for the most recognized open source brand in the world. Through its consulting practice, it has consistently used open source Infrastructure, Integration and Innovation to deliver measurable business value to its enterprise customers; its focus being on the major players in the financial services, telecoms and Oil and gas sectors of the region.
Leveraging on Red Hat's professional services and a budding local team Qrios has successfully delivered projects based on almost every Red Hat solution from the operating system, database availability to SOA and middleware solutions.
Qrios is a regional Red Hat Certified Training Partner.
http://www.qrios.com/
About Red Hat, Inc.
Red Hat, the world's leading open source solutions provider, is headquartered in Raleigh, NC with over 60 offices spanning the globe. CIOs have ranked Red Hat first for value in Enterprise Software for four consecutive years in the CIO Insight Magazine Vendor Value survey. Red Hat provides high-quality, affordable technology with its operating system platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, together with applications, management and Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) solutions, including the JBoss Enterprise Middleware Suite. Red Hat also offers support, training and consulting services to its customers worldwide. Learn more: http://www.redhat.com.
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Certain statements contained in this press release may constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements provide current expectations of future events based on certain assumptions and include any statement that does not directly relate to any historical or current fact. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including: risks related to delays or reductions in information technology spending; the effects of industry consolidation; the ability of the Company to compete effectively; the integration of acquisitions and the ability to market successfully acquired technologies and products; uncertainty and adverse results in litigation and related settlements; the inability to adequately protect Company intellectual property and the potential for infringement or breach of license claims of or relating to third party intellectual property; the ability to deliver and stimulate demand for new products and technological innovations on a timely basis; risks related to data and information security vulnerabilities; ineffective management of, and control over, the Company’s growth and international operations; fluctuations in exchange rates; and changes in and a dependence on key personnel, as well as other factors contained in our most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q (copies of which may be accessed through the Securities and Exchange Commission’s website at http://www.sec.gov), including those found therein under the captions "Risk Factors" and "Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations". In addition to these factors, actual future performance, outcomes, and results may differ materially because of more general factors including (without limitation) general industry and market conditions and growth rates, economic and political conditions, governmental and public policy changes and the impact of natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods. The forward-looking statements included in this press release represent the Company’s views as of the date of this press release and these views could change. However, while the Company may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the Company’s views as of any date subsequent to the date of this press release.
