CWG, Others Introduce IT Transformation Solutions in East Africa

Computer Warehouse Group (CWG) in collaboration with IBM and Infosys successfully introduced IT transformation solutions for the financial services sector in East Africa.

This was at a business technology summit organized by CWG Uganda a member of the pan African Systems Integration Company, CWG.

The summit saw participants from all the major financial companies in Uganda and the East African region.

The summit theme “Driving Finacle core banking application on IBM Power7 and storage” provided a forum to discuss and create awareness about “Finacle core banking application on IBM power systems and storage”.

Industry experts and stakeholders in the financial services industry in East Africa were present at the forum.

Somas K Balasubramanian, Client Technical, Architect, IBM MEA an IT expert with over 16 years industry experience gave a presentation titled “IBM STG Solutions to accelerate the  Banking Transformation Projects with IaaS Cloud”.

In his presentation he spoke about the key challenges in the banking industry ranging from operations integration, service operations to market share demand/ Growing revenues.

He went on to speak about how banks can align their IT services with business objectives and how they can improve the quality of their service while reducing long term costs on IT.

He also touched on the topic of governance, policies, processes and methodologies with regards to Cloud computing, and how IBM can support banks in their journey in the banking industry where IBM has partnered with banks to achieve Smart cloud objectives.

Neeraj Bajpai, ISV & SI’s Architect, IBM & Open Group certified IT Architect; gave a presentation titled “Why Power Systems are Important: Transform your business with IBM Power Systems”

 In his presentation he spoke about factors that banks should consider when choosing a hardware platform for their Core banking application.

Neeraj explained how IBM’s systems high performance, energy efficient servers are ideal for multiple applications and infrastructure workloads while providing one architecture design that supports banking transactions at optimum performance and cost.

He further talked about the IBM/ Finacle value proposition to the banking industry where IBM is the number 1 Unix server maker in the world. 

Also how Finacle integrates and uses IBM technologies such as websphere, Infosphere, Filenet and Rationale.

He also highlighted some of the benefits derived from deploying your core banking application on IBM power servers such as: TCO, Scalability, optimized computing resources, improved server utilization rate, enhanced workload request, approve, capture, deploy process management and control while reducing image deploy time from 2-4 weeks to a few hours for the development and testing workloads amongst other features and benefits.

Michael Manzi, country manager, CWG Uganda who spoke at the summit says; “The trend in the industry today is that customers increasingly feel more comfortable to engage a Single Responsibility Partner (usually the software provider, who has impeccable credentials in hardware as well).

This significantly increases the success factor, and drastically reduces the points of failure in the project by eliminating the resort to finger pointing by many vendors and CWG has over time proved herself as such a Partner with leadership skills and resources in Software, Hardware and Database”.

Addressing the participants, CS Vinay, Associate Regional Manager and Head Africa, Finacle noted that, Finacle core banking application from Infosys is a highly sophisticated and advanced system that has been deployed and is being used by a number of financial services institutions in Africa and other continents. According to him, Finacle enables banks to transform their multi-country operations through a standard platform and process.

It has a set of offerings including interest free banking, wealth management, an enhanced mobile banking solution, consumer e-banking and treasury solutions amongst others.

Finacle has recorded numerous success stories of business transformation in banks in Africa running on IBM Power Servers and Storage systems.

He further explained that the journey so far has been a remarkable one and that he is absolutely sure that the financial industry players in the East Africa will experience remarkable transformation in their businesses by embracing this Finacle solution. According to him, the solution will enable banks drive its objectives of enhancing productivity and innovation-led customer experience in all its operations.

CS Vinay also pointed out the role that Computer Warehouse Group plays in delivering the finacle solution to its banking customer which goes beyond mere partnering with Infosys.

“CWG possess the requisite skills and resources to engage with the customer from the beginning of the sale until the solution is fully delivered.” He said.

CWG, the Pan African Systems integration company, partnering with IBM, a renowned leader and pioneer in the IT industry, and Infosys, the leading universal banking solutions provider will partner with the organisations on their transformation journey delivering world class IT solutions that will add value to the financial services industry in East Africa as we have jointly done in West Africa.