UCPB completes recovery infrastructure

The United Coconut Planters Bank (UCPB) has completed the upgrade of its business recovery infrastructure.

These gives UCPB an expanded capability to provide continuous customer service even if a major disaster or a calamity renders its main data center in Makati City inoperable for an extended period of time.

UCPB senior vice president for information technology Edgardo Diama said the upgrade is part of the bank’s business continuity program, which the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) mandated all banks to put in place to preclude prolonged disruption in the delivery of services.

Completed at a total investment cost of P29.3 million, the upgrade involved setting up a mirror facility of its main computing platform in a remote data center in Alabang, and installing new back-up computer systems for the main data center and the remote site. The two locations are linked by a high bandwidth, fiber optic-based leased line.

Diama explained that all customer transactions and record entries are captured in real time by the main data center and the remote site. The same data are copied onto the back up systems in the two locations on a regular basis, thus creating a second layer of safeguard.

The remote data center is a world-class facility owned and operated by Total Information Management Corp. (TIM), which has been UCPB’s business recovery service provider for more than a decade now.

TIM is a Filipino-owned IT company established in 1985 and is a leading technology services company providing hardware, hardware maintenance, software and system integration, business recovery and outsourcing services for some of the country’s largest enterprises.

It also provides UCPB the remote data replication solution using the EMC 8530 Direct Access Storage Device.