COUNTRY FOCUS: KENYA
It took just one day
for Genghis Capital to
migrate to the cloud
Jeremiah Chunge, Head of Alternative
Channels and Technology at Genghis
Capital Limited
“Prior to us making concrete plans to
move to the cloud we needed to ensure
that there were no objections from the
NSE,” said Chunge.
“We had to take the time to draw up a
business continuity plan to prove to them
how we hoped to achieve the move with
no disruption to customers as well as
what mitigation plans to use in the event
that the change was not successful.
“We had to include the fact that it would
be a private cloud and not a shared
cloud, as well as how we would mirror the
servers four times on the primary cloud
location to meet and exceed regulatory
required uptime and availability, as well
as an off-site backup site.
“The SLA with Node Africa was part of
the requirement, as was the TCO benefit
to the business, the sustainability of the
solution and the privacy between vendor,
customer and partner. Only when this
was reviewed and the NSE provided their
approval, with the provision that if it
failed we would have to revert to the old
system, could the rollout be confirmed.
“We are the first bank in Kenya to move
all our operations to the cloud, something
the NSE confirmed. Furthermore, none of
our staff had to go to the NSE’s trading
floor because of system unavailability.
After one month of planning, the
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INTELLIGENTCIO
migration took just the Saturday and we
were up and running.” only pays for what it uses and scales as
and when needed.
The bank’s voice applications are now 100%
in the cloud, they no longer have a physical
PABX, the voice infrastructure and backups
have moved to the cloud, staff have moved
from regular desktops to virtual desktops
(now using HP Google Chromebooks), with
full integration of Google Apps, Microsoft
Office, Active directory and virtualised day-
to-day user applications. The team has remote access to all services
on the cloud and security is improved as
IT staff are no longer required on site on
weekends to fix problems. The bank has
also been able to remove the tax liability of
having IT infrastructure on its books.
The Genghis Capital deployment at the
Node Africa site is 100% ringfenced, all
hardware that is dedicated to the bank is
completely separate from all of its other
systems, the edge has been secured as are
all desktop apps, with the help of NSX.
“The migration took one day, and we have
reduced costs dramatically,” said Chunge.
“Each server would have cost US$70,000
and we would have required a minimum of
five core servers for the new environment.
Conversely the cost to migrate was a fraction
of the price at just US$3,000 a month. Work
the costs out over a three-year refreshment
cycle and it just makes business sense.”
Genghis Capital is also experiencing
improved efficiency in terms of resources
and their allocation, as it applies and
“We can scale systems better, and since
deployment, we have added a fund
management solution, a mobile application
and two web servers,” said Chunge.
“All of which were added to our infrastructure
at no extra cost. Security is also greatly
improved, not just of our data, but of the
physical infrastructure too – as we don’t have
to concern ourselves with the threat of people
breaking into the property to steal equipment.”
Phares Kariuki, CEO at Node Africa, said:
“Our job as Node Africa was to show
Genghis Capital what was possible with a
cloud solution.
“We had to prove how we could help enable
productivity and enable their IT team to
focus on higher order problems, such as
generating revenue and how IT should
enable this in a business. They really are
progressive in their approach and it’s been
incredible to work with them.” n
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