Intelligent CIO Middle East Issue 44 | Page 49

COUNTRY FOCUS: LEBANON ABOUT BLC BANK Founded in 1949, BLC Bank is one of the leading financial institutions in the Lebanon. From its headquarters in Beirut, the bank operates a network of 49 branches and employs over 750 professionals. BLC Bank mainly offers its services through three business segments: Commercial and corporate banking, personal banking and private banking. “Backup windows already exceeded permissible limits and were rapidly climbing. We couldn’t test and verify the quality of the backups in a timely manner either. When it’s the financial data of customers at stake, you simply cannot bear such a risk,” he said. “Recovery too was complicated and often took more than a day to complete, meaning services could become unavailable for extended periods. “In an industry where every second of downtime rapidly erodes customer trust and loyalty, addressing this was a pressing concern for my department,” Deaibess said. www.intelligentcio.com “ TECHNOLOGY- READINESS HAS ALLOWED BLC BANK TO INNOVATE AND DIFFERENTIATE ITSELF FROM THE COMPETITION. The solution BLC Bank first conducted a proof of concept (PoC) of Veeam Availability Suite and managed the installation in under half a day. Full access to the solution’s powerful features quickly convinced Deaibess and his team that Veeam was the right choice and they then completed the actual implementation in just a day, which he stated was an ‘unmatched’ ease of deployment. With 85% of its environment now virtualised, most of the bank’s applications now rely on Veeam. This includes its core banking and mobile banking applications, INTELLIGENTCIO 49