Alinma Bank has become the first bank in Saudi Arabia to implement the “Active-Active” data center model for the execution and redundancy of its e-services. With the Active-Active model, Alinma has eliminated transactional and operational delays and downtime through the 100%, real-time integration of both its primary and secondary data centers. This allows Alinma to provide its partners (customers) with a more seamless, secure e-service experience, in which system failures no longer impact the completion of transactions or other banking operations.
Migration to the Active-Active model was part of Alinma’s ongoing IT strategy, and was made possible thanks to the robustness of the bank’s original IT architecture and the absence of any legacy systems that would prevent such a move.
Speaking about the Active-Active implementation, Alinma Bank Managing Director & CEO, Mr. Abdulmohsen Al-Fares, said he was pleased to have reached this important milestone.
“The Active-Active model is the gold standard for data center operation, and it is something that we targeted from day one,” said Al-Fares. “With its implementation, Alinma has achieved a major objective in its ongoing IT strategic development, and we anticipate that this move will make Alinma even more capable of delivering best-in-class e-services to our partners as we continue to grow and scale our businesses.
The Active-Active data center model is a major improvement over the Active-Passive model still in use by many banks. With Active-Passive, banks can only duplicate data at periodic intervals from primary to secondary data centers as part of typical disaster recovery operations. During system failures, this leads to cancelled customer transactions and often significant downtime for e-services. Active-Active, on the other hand, provides for instantaneous sharing of information between data centers, and the elimination of downtime altogether.
Alinma Bank serves its partners through a network of 153 branches and more than 1400 ATMs across the kingdom. It also provides partners with comprehensive, 24/7, e-channel options that include Alinma Internet (www.alinma.com), Alinma Phone (8001208000), Alinma Mobile (WAP) and the Alinma smart device application.