Case Study

VocaLink chooses Interlink Software’s Business Enterprise Server to help ensure the availability of systems, networks and applications

More than 100,000 users connect to VocaLink to submit their automated payments to the BACS service, including all the FTSE 100 companies. Processing in excess of 90 million payments on a peak day makes the guarantee of always- available systems an absolute necessity. Interlink Software’s Business Enterprise Server plays an integral part in helping VocaLink deliver this level of service. Business Enterprise Server provides state-of-the-art visualization capabilities that enable VocaLink to create dashboards, highly-customised graphical displays that can be tailored to the needs of both technical and business users.

 

What does Interlink Software’s Business Enterprise Server do?

Business Enterprise Server makes it simple to acquire the events, metrics, and other key performance indicators for the technology components that underpin business services. VocaLink was particularly interested in the genuine, thin web client capabilities offered by Business Enterprise Server, allowing it to build the business service dashboards it required.

 

Overview

VocaLink is a young company with a long history. Its creation on 2nd July, 2007 brought together two market leaders in electronic payments and transactions. Voca was a leading automated payments processor responsible for processing the Bacs service; while LINK Interchange Network managed the world’s busiest ATM network. Two years prior to the merger, Voca and LINK Interchange Network joined forces to deliver the UK’s Faster Payments service. Both companies had impeccable service records, the confidence of the financial community and the passion to move the banking industry forward. A culture of high performance and always-available systems is central to the business ethos at VocaLink.

VocaLink provides domestic and international transaction services to banks and their corporate customers. The company launched Europe’s first independent pan-European payment service, the VocaLink Euro CSM (Clearing & Settlement Mechanism), in partnership with nearly 20 of Europe’s leading banks.

 

The challenge

By 2003, the organisation had clocked up more than three and a half decades of delivering excellent service in the financial services sector. As the company grew, so did its IT infrastructure. The mid nineties saw them implement Boole & Babbage’s COMMAND/Post for Tandem and ICL systems. In 2001, they struck up a relationship with Interlink Software, deploying POWERpack to monitor and track end-to-end business processes. Their technology portfolio also included BMC’s PATROL Enterprise Manager.

Like all world-class IT organizations, VocaLink has extensive service level agreements (SLAs) with its customers and its place at the heart of the financial community means an unparalleled duty of care to those customers. Customers included every FTSE 100 company; VocaLink processes 90 percent of all salaries paid in the UK, more than 70 percent of household bills and the majority of state benefits. Duty of care includes reflecting the evolving regulatory changes facing all companies operating in the financial services sector and changing technology. VocaLink has kept pace by regularly upgrading its processes and systems.

With the ongoing expansion and development of new VocaLink services, it became clear a fresh approach was needed to ensure IT could maintain the level of support expected by the business and the Industry. “All things considered,” says Alan Thompson, head of the enterprise management team at VocaLink, “to return to monitoring systems and technology the way mainframes were historically monitored was not an option. Although we considered moving to a single vendor solution to replace our best-of-breed monitoring estate, we couldn’t justify it in terms of cost, benefits or functional gains.

We had an Interlink product already in place to augment the BMC PATROL (now BMC Performance Manager) platform monitoring and event correlation and we had been running very efficiently for some time. The support Interlink have provided has always been excellent and their product roadmap meshed well with our strategic objectives”.

 

How Interlink Software could help

After several months of evaluation VocaLink chose Interlink Software’s Business Enterprise Server (BES) as its event management and end-to-end service management platform.

“We need to identify in real-time, and historically, how the availability and performance of our IT infrastructure affects our business, allowing us to continue to guarantee outstanding levels of service to our customers,” says Thompson. “Interlink Software’s BES proved to be the best tool to help us get there. We chose Interlink Software because we need to manage end-to-end services, rather than individual technologies.”

One of the most visible consequences of the BES implementation is the Payments Engine panel, an integrated view representing end-to-end availability, performance, security, and end-user experience for the VocaLink Payments Engine. The panel makes real-time and historical information for all these indicators available from a single view.

The dashboard provides vital service health information directly to VocaLink support staff via web browsers, giving them the ability to rapidly identify technology failures, understand their business impact, and zoom in quickly to identify the failing component. Context-sensitive launching provides quick access to tools, online help, procedures, and automation scripts, helping support staff to restore service as quickly as possible.

 

Changing culture

VocaLink is a business services provider to banks and their customers and relies heavily on technology to maintain its reputation for flawless delivery.

“Our service portfolio has experienced a five-fold increase in the past three years and Interlink’s solution has played a part in making that growth as painless as possible. Despite our rapid expansion, it has helped us maintain the same level of resources, monitoring and manpower,” says Thompson.

Looking to the future, VocaLink is building further still on its Business Enterprise Server implementation, making increased use of service views, dashboards and automation. One enhancement currently in development will make dashboards available on Blackberrys for support staff.

 

When the industry-changing Faster Payments service went live, on 27 th May 2008, Interlink Software’s Business Enterprise Server played a part in its success. Faster Payments, which provides near real-time payment processing, offers banking customers an innovative new way to pay and be paid. VocaLink, developed and operates the central infrastructure for Faster Payments, and has leveraged Business Enterprise Server to provide the real-time service status information required to ensure service goals are met.