In cooperation with the Privredna Bank Belgrade, Pexim had the pleasure of implementing a comprehensive solution consolidating the entire operations of this Bank, which included software and hardware components. The solution ensured significant improvement of the business operations and provided solid grounds for projected growth in the coming years.

Privredna Bank Belgrade has more than 30 years tradition of working at the Yugoslav financial market, at the beginning being part of the largest bank system in the former Yugoslavia – United Banks, Sarajevo. As of 1989, the Bank is an autonomous company and as of 1995, it is a shareholding company

The applicative system being in the state established upon the analysis was not able to provide for the planned Bank’s development. Hence, Pexim's Core solution was recognized as a solution advancing the operations and enabling the further growth of the Bank. This included implementation of nine new applications: new payments operations, foreign currency application, credit - deposit operations, retail banking, payment cards operations, the ledger, the shareholders’ book, securities and salaries.

The situation of the information system of the Belgrade Privredna Bank showed problems with the major hardware and lack of adequate equipment for storage of data of vital importance for the Bank’s operations. There was a need established for installation of data storage devices that would enable reliable storage of information, with high level of error and loss protection. Until then, the Bank had stored data on a device that did not fulfill the required standards in terms of capacities. The requirements for data storage room had gone beyond the capacities of the existing storage system. In addition to the limitations related to the data storage room, Privredna Bank Belgrade also established the need for efficient protection of vital data from equipment failure at the Bank’s main office. Hence, the decision to procure fault tolerant storage system that enabled internal fail-over (processors, power supply, and signal routes) in order to secure relevant data availability. In order to completely fulfill the established requirements, it was proposed to introduce a remote location at which production data would be copied. Furthermore, it was necessary to implement storage data center in terms of protection and quality management of vital information, then in terms of facilitated maintenance of the existing and/or future resources of the Bank, and in terms of reducing the number of steps required for conduct of certain business operations.

In this context, the Privredna Bank Belgrade established the need to advance the existing resources, and introduce new ones and thus started its cooperation with Pexim aiming at acquiring quality assistance in its restructuring project.

The basic goal of the project was to establish production environment that would enable availability of all data on 24x7x365 basis, utilizing the advantages of Microsoft SQL 2000 and Microsoft Cluster Servers that relay on the EMC Storage system, IBM system and Cisco system network devices.

The servers and service installation and configuration were also greatly important for the entire network infrastructure and the bank’s operations. The purpose of the implementation of the banking operations applicative system– PUB 2000 was to ensure the following for the Privredna Bank Belgrade:

• Efficient bank operations management
• Automatization of the working processes which would be considered rational in this context
• Satisfying all established requirements and all information requirements of all users at the Bank and in the environment (National Bank of Serbia, the Statistical Office and other bodies)

The banking operations applicative system – PUB 2000 has the following features:

• Openness to new contents in the Bank’s operations;
• Openness in terms of facilitated adjustment to new requirements resulting from legislative amendments and supplements and changes to other regulations
• Openness in terms of application of new technologies in the banking operations area (e-business, Internet , etc)

The implementation of the applicative segment of the Project started in September 2006, and the production start was planned for the end of December 2006.

The following was delivered under the Project:

• Configuration of the EMC storage system cx300
• Configuration of IBM x460 servers
• Installation of Windows 2003 EE R2 operative systems
• Advanced adjustments of Windows 2003 OS
• MSCS  configuration
• Installation of 1 instance MSSQL 2000 EE SP4 servers as clustered resource
• Advanced adjustment of Windows SQL 2000 EE services
• SQL security
• Migration of certain servers at the IBM blade center
• EMC software installation
• Preparation of the environment for configuration of the Disaster Recovery solution
• Installation and configuration of the mid layer servers in the NLB operative regime at the Blade server

Pexim’s system solutions are based on the ILM concept (Information Lifecycle Management). The basis of the ILM concept is that the information value changes over time and that the software managing the information must take into consideration its real time value for the client, coupled with optimum utilization of the available storage room and decreasing the overall costs.

The starting points of the Project were the following:

• Establishment of always available and secure high performance system
• Facilitated future capacities enlargement following the real needs
• Simple and efficient system management from one place
• Efficient and secure back up and restore system
• Establishment of the disaster recovery function base

The Project was managed following MSF (Microsoft Solution Framework), as the recommended methodological framework for management of projects implementing Microsoft technologies.

Following the MSF guidelines, the Project Team was composed of the Client and Pexim’s experts. The Project was completed following precisely defined stages and documents regarding the delivered activities and products.