IBM (News - Alert) announced that two Russian banks, Rosbank and Alfa-Bank have chosen IBM POWER7 Systems for managing huge volumes of data-intensive transaction data and analyze that data in real time. This is expected to help them improve customer service while reducing data center costs. 

According to IBM sources Alfa-Bank will use its two new POWER7 servers to build an automated reporting system based on IBM DB2. The bank can draw insight from vast amounts of data and then anticipate emerging business trends. The POWER7 servers at Alfa-Bank are capable of delivering optimum performance besides reducing energy consumption by 60 percent. The system was implemented by Diona Holding, an IBM business partner in Russia.

In a release Artem Shakhverdyan, deputy head of Alfa-Bank’s Integration Systems Office said, “Alfa-Bank has a ten-year history of using IBM's Power Systems to support business growth. During this period our customer base has grown to 40,000 corporate and 4.1 million private clients and our branch network has grown to 340 branches and offices across Russia and abroad.”

“At Alfa-Bank, it is crucial that our technology investments scale in line with our accelerated growth - POWER7’s unprecedented performance and virtualization capabilities meet our bank’s business development needs for the next four years,” Shakhverdyan added.

Rosbank, also from the Russian banking sector, bought two POWER7 servers running AIX, IBM DB2, IBM WebSphere and IBM InfoSphere DataStage software. The new systems will enable Rosbank to implement a new CRM system which will provide a 360-degree view of the customer. The systems can provide insight into large quantities of transactional data so that Rosbank can improve service and optimize its offerings and sales channels besides enhancing other analytical tasks also.

Olga, Deputy Chairman of the Management Board of Rosbank said, “We are committed to implementing powerful IT solutions which help us to automate and improve complex business processes.”

Skorobogatova noted that IBM POWER7 systems optimize cost/performance ratio and provide a powerful tool to draw insight about customer trends and make the bank competitive.

IBM also announced that Russian pharmaceutical distributor PROTEK will replace its previous HP servers with IBM POWER7 systems for its data processing center. Also IBM announced that National TRUST Bank bought five IBM POWER7 servers to support the reorganization of its branch and office network across Russia.