HPE 696909-B21 Product Data Sheet

AUTOMATIA’S HIGH AVAILABILITY SYSTEMS
KEEP FINLAND’S CASH FLOWING

Case Study

HP customer
case study:

HP servers process
cash withdrawals
for five million bank
customers

Industry:

Financial services

“We rely on the HP Integrity NonStop BladeSystem
to process around 160 million ATM withdrawals a
year, which ensures that the people of Finland can
always gain access to their cash.” Esa Makkonen, chief
information officer, Automatia

Objective

Implement new ATM functions and applications while
decreasing the price per transaction

Approach

Sought a more powerful solution that could deliver
zero application downtime, extreme scalability,
business continuity and exceptional security levels

IT improvements

• Simplified the technical architecture, resulting in
easier and more cost-effective management and
operation

• Achieved 100 per cent uninterrupted application
availability meeting service level agreements with
banks

• Introduced greater CPU power to support new
developments such as self-service deposit terminals

Business benefits

• Lowers operational costs by combining fault tolerant
features with the time and energy efficiencies of
blades

• Provided a clear five-year technology path to keep
pace with budget planning and projected business
growth

Instant access to cash is a vital requirement in today’s
consumer society and bank customers expect ATMs to be
available day and night.

To provide this vital service, banks in Finland decided that
instead of each operating their own ATM network, they
would replace their expensive, disparate system with a
single pooled resource. This led to the launch of the new
company, Automatia, which now operates all the country’s
ATMs and also manages the delivery of cash to the banks.

Sophisticated systems

Owned by the three largest banks, Nordea Bank, OP­Pohjola Group and Sampo Bank, Automatia operates
the nationwide Otto ATM network which serves all
Finnish bank customers, as well as foreign Visa and
Mastercard users. There are some 1,700 Otto ATMs which
provide cash for approximately five million people and
process 160 million withdrawals a year.

Despite huge responsibilities, Automatia operates with
just 30 employees. Formed in 1994, the company
made a strategic decision to outsource IT services rather
than run them in-house. Drawing money from a cash
point is a simple procedure but behind the scenes it
requires highly-sophisticated information systems that
meet security requirements while ensuring 100 per cent
availability. Automatia required systems that would ensure
uninterrupted application availability and could cope with
future increases in demand. It also required an outsourcing
partner who could carry out regular audits, run quality
processes and conduct comprehensive testing.

End-to-end service

Automatia chose Tieto, one of Northern Europe’s leading
IT service companies, because it could deliver the best
solution at the best price. Initially, Tieto provided just the
software used to process transactions but its responsibilities
have since been extended to include end-to-end service.

When selecting a hardware platform that could cope
with the enormous daily volume of transactions, Tieto
and Automatia needed servers that were efficient, secure
and 100 per cent reliable and could keep pace with its
growing business.

In the early days, Automatia outsourced its operation
to one of its owner banks which operated an
HP environment. Tieto had also been a long-time user
of HP NonStop S-series technology. For continuity it was
therefore agreed to remain with HP and an HP Integrity
NonStop BladeSystem was selected.

Mission critical platform

Tieto has implemented two 16Gb HP Integrity NonStop
NB50004c BladeSystems along with an HP Support
Plus24 (SP24) critical support service at its data centre in
Helsinki, which supports the transaction processing for
Automatia’s ATM network.

”We realised that HP Integrity NonStop server blades
would allow us to deliver mission-critical transactions at
a lower cost,” explains Tieto’s director for banking and
insurance, Jaakko Savola. “These HP servers run the
transaction processing using Tieto application software.
When someone uses an ATM, the request is sent to
these host systems and then forwarded to one of the
country’s nine issuing banks which handles the necessary
verifications and processes the payment.”

Data is transmitted over Datacom 100Mb or 1Gb Ethernet
connections and Multiprotocol Label Switching virtual
private networks. The processing software is specially
tailored for Automatia and is based on HP NonStop
system software, such as HP Pathway and HP NonStop
Transaction Management Facility (TMF).

Customer at a glance

HP hardware

• HP BladeSystem enclosures

• HP Integrity NonStop NB50004c BladeSystem

HP software

• HP Pathway

• HP NonStop Transaction Management Facility (TMF)

HP services

• HP Support Plus24 (SP24) critical support

“From Tieto’s point of view, we are very pleased with the
HP BladeSystem solution,” adds Savola. “The servers have
delivered 100 per cent uptime, discounting the once-a-year
planned downtime when we update operating systems.
Together with HP, we have delivered a good solution
for Automatia.

“The upgrade of the HP Integrity NonStop environment
has made it possible to simplify the solution and technical
architecture. The implementation of more modern system
software, as well as support for the Java environment, was
key to the success of the project. As a result the whole

tailor-made solution is running on the HP Integrity NonStop
platform which simplifies the technical architecture as well
as increasing the overall uptime of the solution to 100
per cent.

“Because both the upgrade and Automatia’s solution
require less infrastructure than the old platform, it will
lead to lower infrastructure costs for Automatia. The new
environment has four times more capacity than the old one
so Automatia has a solid path to increase current volumes
and expand its business to new areas.”

Makkonen adds: “the reliability and usability of the servers
means that our bank customers are happy with the service
we provide and the end result is that the people of Finland
can get cash any time they want.”

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© Copyright 2011 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only
warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein
should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.

4AA3-7375EEW, Created December 2011

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