Scaling cloud-native banking services with IBM Db2 and AWS

Modernizing a database from on-premises to the cloud could take weeks to months. Profile Centevo also needed a specific way to store sensitive data and manage security, configure monitoring of services consumed, storage, memory, CPU, and other database management tasks, and avoid connectivity issues throughout a migration. Profile Group chose Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its primary cloud provider for its leading infrastructure management, security, compliance and straight forward migration for on-premises deployments like IBM Db2. Having Db2 available on Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), IBM and AWS made it seamless for Profile Centevo to migrate its Db2 databases and applications to the AWS cloud with database migration services and like-for-like compatibility. Amazon RDS for Db2 automates time-consuming database administration tasks, such as provisioning, backups, software patching, monitoring and more, to free up time to innovate and drive business value.

In just 15 days, Profile Centevo took its on-premises Db2 database environments and applications to the cloud, which would have taken three times longer without the Amazon RDS service. Traditionally, tedious tasks such as restoring a database to production took only two days without downtime or changes to applications. The migration to AWS is a significant milestone, with over 20 fund managers and distributors seamlessly transitioning to the new platform. Profile Centevo has also migrated its message integration services, ultimately benefitting its customers with improved services and capabilities. With a modern, cloud-native infrastructure on AWS, Profile Centevo can now quickly scale new applications and use cases across regions as it looks to expand globally.

“Had Amazon RDS for Db2 not been available as a solution, it could have taken us three times longer to modernize our Db2 instance to the cloud,” says Antonis Tsoulidis, Cloud Architect and DevOps Manager at Profile Centevo. “Without Amazon RDS for Db2, we would have had to do the installation of Db2 ourselves, manage the security and encryption of the database, configure monitoring of our instance, and manage connectivity issues.”

The modernization to cloud-native solutions enhances Profile Centevo’s commitment to financial services, now providing advanced connectivity for entities utilizing SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications) to support live payments, further reinforcing Profile Centevo’s position as a leading financial service provider in Norway.

“This achievement not only highlights our commitment to innovation and autonomy but also underscores our dedication to providing superior services to our clients,” say Dr. Apostolos Kritikopoulos, Group Technical Director at Profile Group. “The transition to AWS and the development of our independent functionalities places us in a prominent position in the financial service providers market in Norway.”

Profile Centevo has been pleased with the improvements in productivity since its latest IBM and AWS-driven transformation and has been able to experience many benefits from modernizing to the cloud:

• With just a few clicks, the company can set up a new database instance, eliminating the hassle of lengthy configuration processes.
• The solution supports high availability helping to deliver always-on fund and asset management applications and transactions powered by AWS Multi-AZ and cross-region backups.
• AWS manages out-of-the-box security and encryption and allows Profile Centevo to also configure to its liking and prevent exposure of sensitive financial data.
• Automated database monitoring allows the company to optimize its database instance and resources better, informing it of when to scale down to reduce costs or scale up if more resources are needed.
• It can reduce the duration of production database snapshots for high-quality data from four hours to five minutes.
• The company saves 288 hours of work per year maintaining upgrades now automated with AWS-managed maintenance upgrades.

“Overall, it gives us excellent monitoring of the resources consumed and enables us to optimize our instance on the fly,” says Tsoulidis. “Additionally, it helps to ensure secure and compliant transactions, and automation of other tedious tasks like upgrades, will save us hundreds of hours of manual upgrade work annually.”

Given that tedious infrastructure management tasks are now managed by AWS, Profile Centevo estimates up to 4x lower annual infrastructure costs from migrating its existing, self-managed Db2 databases to the cloud.

“For example, when it comes to infrastructure management costs, what we used to pay on-premises is four times more than what we are paying now with Amazon RDS for Db2. We are not talking about an application that doesn’t require a lot of resources; we are talking about an application that is resource demanding, so you can imagine the cost savings opportunity from this,” said Tsoulidis.

Looking ahead, Profile Centevo plans to expand its business and fund management application to several other customers in Nordics and outside of Nordics globally. Given the simplicity of the Amazon RDS for Db2 service and migration, the company looks forward to migrating other applications to Amazon RDS to propagate its cloud-based services to other regions globally.

Profile Centevo (link resides outside of ibm.com) is a specialized asset and fund management solutions provider in the Nordic region. The company delivers digital services for over 65 clients and is a reliable long-term provider with a well-proven onboarding process and agile development methodology.