CSC Jordan is a leading financial services company that provides banks, financial institutions, and retailers in Jordan with innovative solutions for all forms of electronic payments, as well as ATM management and acquirer solutions. In addition, CSC issues all types of payment cards (issuer solutions) depending on its clients’ needs and is the proud owner and provider of its own Islamic Visa credit card, Arabex.
| Achieved fastest transaction processing time for electronic payments (600ms) in Jordan. | Reduced data center footprint by 30% while enhancing scalability and flexibility. | On track to achieve full project ROI within one year. |
Server migration is usually a nightmare for IT infrastructure teams but with Nutanix we had absolutely no issues or downtime.
Since its establishment in 2004, CSC has held a strong position in Jordan’s banking and financial services sector as a provider of the popular Arabex Islamic credit card. In recent years, the company’s leadership decided to capitalize on this established brand value and launch a host of new solutions and services.
“Our management saw the opportunity to leverage our local expertise to effectively tackle the challenges that banks and merchants in Jordan faced around the management of ATMs and Point of Sales (POS) systems,” Fares Aljawhary, CTO at CSC Jordan explained.
CSC has always been committed to leveraging best-in-class IT infrastructure and was eager to deploy its new services on market leading technologies. However, recognizing that the company would be venturing into uncharted territory with these new offerings, the management was wary of overinvesting in solutions it wouldn’t fully utilize. “We couldn’t fully estimate the market’s reception so we needed to be mindful of that. But at the same time, I didn't want to restrict our long-term ambitions. Scalability and flexibility were therefore among our key requirements,” said Naseem Almasri, Infrastructure and Security Manager at CSC Jordan.
As we continue to innovate and meet the electronic payments needs of Jordan’s financial sector, we can rest assured that Nutanix will support our appetite for innovation.
Seeing this project as an opportunity to scale back their data center footprint, CSC was expertly guided by PROTECH, a leading IT solutions advisor and provider in Jordan, in selecting and implementing the hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) solution from Nutanix. As predicted by PROTECH, this deployment enabled CSC to cut down its hardware resources by over 30%.
Describing the process of establishing the company’s first Nutanix cluster as ‘a piece of cake’, Naseem said, “Implementing the cluster, applying the security controls, and migrating the VMs all took less than four days. Server migration is usually a nightmare for IT infrastructure teams but with Nutanix we had absolutely no issues or downtime.”
This difference was especially noticeable when CSC deployed SAP HANA. “When we previously installed this on a standalone physical server, it took us six days to install the operating system alone – the complexity, hardware and interoperability issues were staggering. On the other hand, with Nutanix this took just five minutes,” said Naseem. This has given CSC the confidence to migrate all its critical applications and databases including Microsoft SQL, Microsoft Exchange, its SMS Gateway, mobile application, and its Intranet services to the Nutanix environment.
While this speed and simplicity of migration are appreciated by CSC’s IT team, it is the performance of these applications that is most valued by the company’s leadership and customers. “We serve over 6,500 POS terminals, 4,000 credit card users, 6,000 pre-paid card users, and 10,000 mobile application users across three financial institutions and two banks in Jordan. Speed of transactions is what matters most to these customers as even mere seconds of delay can result in the loss of a sale,” said Fares Aljawhary.
Security and compliance are another aspect that is essential in the financial sector and here too, Nutanix has proved invaluable to CSC. “We run regular snapshots every two minutes. If any application team requests a rollback, I just need two seconds to service their requirement. This is even faster than what we’re required to achieve from a compliance standpoint,” said Naseem.
Fares Aljawhary estimates that CSC will achieve full return on investment for their Nutanix solution within just a year, and that the infrastructure will meet his organization’s requirements for at least the next three years. “CSC is at an inflection point and our new ATM management and POS services are just the start of the line of exciting new offerings we will bring to market in the coming years. As we continue to innovate and meet the electronic payments needs of Jordan’s financial sector, we can rest assured that Nutanix will support our appetite for innovation,” he concluded.