Nutanix, a leader in hybrid multi-cloud computing, recently announced that a leading Iraqi financial institution, Ashur International Bank has deployed robust, reliable, high-performance IT infrastructure from the vendor that sets the foundation for digital banking innovation in the country.
With the demand for digital banking skyrocketing in Iraq, Ashur International Bank was committed to its mission of leveraging the latest global technological developments to serve the best interests of its customers.
Industry sources added that the Bank’s legacy infrastructure – with its complex network of point-to-point integrations between systems – was a barrier to these ambitions. Keen to shift towards the more efficient, effective, and secure approach of using microservices, APIs, and containerized applications, the bank sought to revamp its underlying infrastructure.
Industry sources further affirmed that guided by the expertise of its local technology partner, Ashur International Bank’s IT team identified Red Hat OpenShift as the enterprise Kubernetes container platform of choice. Due to regulatory constraints, the bank could not leverage the public cloud-hosted version of this solution and so decided to build its private cloud, which led it to Red hat OpenShift on Nutanix.
Iraq’s finance sector is on the cusp of a digital banking revolution (DBR), and Ashur International Bank is at the vanguard. 24×7 self-service, robo-advisors, AI-powered kiosks, and voice biometrics have all been earmarked as milestones along the Bank’s 5-year digital transformation journey. Nutanix’s technology will underpin all these applications.
Bashar Al-otaibi, Head of Digital Transformation at Ashur International Bank stated “When you talk private cloud, there’s only one company you should partner with. Nutanix is simply brilliant and with incredibly strong references from our peers in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan for not just their technology, but the associated local expertise and support we knew they were the right choice. With their jointly validated design, Nutanix and Red Hat were able to demonstrate the value of Openshift as an enterprise-grade Kubernetes platform for mission-critical applications. This gave us the level of confidence needed as a bank to proceed with this design.”
Further to the deployment, the Bank’s IT team has seen its operational overheads decline sharply, and Al-otaibi estimates that full return on investment (ROI) on the project will be achieved within just months. With little to no time spent on infrastructure management, Al-otaibi’s team has been quick to refocus its efforts on innovation. “With our ability to build powerful, stable, and secure containerized applications in our private cloud, we can pioneer innovations that are truly transformative in the Iraqi market,” he stated.
The IT team is currently in the process of developing a new Smart Payments module – the first of its kind in Iraq. Combining voice biometrics and Natural Language Processing (NLP) chatbots, the bank will empower customers to be rapidly authenticated and then intuitively make transactions by simply conversing with an automated virtual teller. “These sorts of AI-powered applications are tremendously compute-intensive, but with Nutanix, we know we have the platform that can support such innovations,” stated Al-otaibi.
At Ashur International Bank, we aren’t just creating impactful new digital services for our customers, we are actively setting new benchmarks for the BFSI segment in Iraq. By standardizing on technologies from market-leading vendors such as Nutanix and Red Hat, we are setting high standards that our peers in the country are sure to aspire towards,” he concluded.
Also, Read: – Raif Abou Diab elected as Nutanix CM for the Middle East and Pakistan
Al-Hajery & Sons partners with Nutanix for digital transformation success
Egypt’s Emergence As MENA’s Leading Digital Banking Frontier
Accenture Powers CBDs Digital Transformation In ME
Ibra’s renovated OAB branch improves digital banking
