The partnership between FIS and IBM began in 2000 with a large global outsourcing contract which required FIS to provide card processing services in Australia, New Zealand, the UK and Ireland. FIS based the card system on the IBM Z server platform for core processing. They chose IBM to supply the mainframe processing capabilities to execute the contract—forming a strong relationship that now spans almost 20 years.
These services are high value and critical to the operational business of FIS and fundamental to the outsourcing relationships and contracts with their clients. IBM was the only partner that could perform the critical role in planning, testing and migration services for the new infrastructure in conjunction with the FIS application and support teams.
“We have a long-term partnership with IBM that has been extremely successful over the last 20 years. IBM are second-to-none in the mainframe services area and they were the logical choice with whom to engage for this project.” Anita LeMaire, FIS
FIS worked with IBM to ensure exceptional scalability, reliability and business continuity for their cards system infrastructure. The FIS cards system, BASE Global, has an extensive inventory of configurable components shared across all product lines to support cards products. This unique design ensures operating efficiency while dramatically accelerating the time to market of new products and services.
With almost 20 years of engagement, IBM has helped FIS migrate to two new Tier 3/4 data centres and implemented new mainframe, storage, fibre network connectivity and virtual tape technology into these sites. They migrated and tested all data, production and development workloads, and seamlessly cut over the production environments without client impact. Recovery on IBM Z enabled FIS to re-establish critical services to the alternate site within minutes, as the core infrastructure was designed to rapidly resume mission-critical functions. The data centre relocation with upgraded infrastructure allows FIS to switch production between the two data centre locations on scheduled dates to reduce downtime and mitigate risk for disaster recovery. IBM also ensures that the infrastructure meets critical audit requirements including PCI DSS, ISO22301, ISO27001 and ASAE3402.
Often referred as one of the world’s most sophisticated business servers, the IBM Z delivers mixed workload integration, high-transaction processing and data serving, providing enriched functions for the on-demand operating environment.
The main objective of the partnership was creating synergy between FIS's strength in applications and outsourced operations and the strong IT infrastructure technology and management prowess of IBM. The partnership consistently achieves high ratings for client satisfaction, thanks to superior client management and services, and consistent service delivery. As FIS’s partner of choice, the IBM team is integrated on-site and able to take the pulse of their business.