Bank of Valletta

Computime have been working with Bank of Valletta for a number of years, and have been responsible for implementing various projects for this prestigious customer. 



The BOV Group is a leading financial services provider in Malta, providing a full range of financial services including investment banking, private banking, fund management, bancassurance and stockbroking. Domestic operations include a national network of 41 branches, a Corporate Centre, 5 Business Centres and a Wealth Management arm.

In addition to the traditional banking services, BOV is continuing to evolve its product portfolio to include new financial products. BOV also issues bank cards under the Visa, MasterCard and American Express brand names and offers Internet banking, customer service centre, telephone banking and mobile banking to its personal and corporate customers.

In 2006, Bank of Valletta’s goal was to implement an Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) solution using tools, techniques, and technology to enable the effective interoperation of its numerous business applications within a framework of business processes. The ultimate strategic goal was to attain a Single Desktop Environment. The key technical challenges included:

• Conduct transformation and routing intensive activities in a highly available highly scalable fashion
• Create enterprise wide access to information through one singe Enterprise Service Bus, making it available when and where it's needed
• Ensure unprecedented software based scalability and fault tolerance for crucial applications that every part of the business can work on
• Application integration through a unique fusion of services oriented and event driven object orchestration

For this task, Bank of Valletta awarded this project to Computime with the participation of Sun Microsystems consultants. The main platform used was JCAPS SOA platform (5.1.2) on top of Solaris. After the initial setup of the JCAPS infrastructure layer a pool of consultants from Sun Microsystems, Computime and BOV IT personnel started working in parallel on a number of business processes and underlying composite applications. This involved the development of new functionality and integration with web-services exposed functionality from existing systems written in different technologies. This new layer provided a single desktop environment for the end users, seamlessly integrating functions from existing backend solutions. Computime were entrusted with the implementation of the Cheques processing business process, handling the upload and processing of cheques received from various banks and interfaces with a number of existing banking systems using standard based web services for validations and updates. At the infrastructure layer the system integrates with a common auditing and security infrastructure which is common for JCAPS environment.
 

Computime have been also instrumental in providing the Bank of Valletta with an efficient and secure and scaleable network that provides full connectivity between all parts of the operation.   The infrastructure was developed over a number of years, starting in 1996 when Computime designed, supplied and implemented an Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) backbone that interconnected the major branches with head office.

Following that, in most of the major branches and head office we implemented a switched Local Area Network (LAN) to enhance the network connectivity between the local users and the central servers.  We then designed a Wide Area Network (WAN) infrastructure to connect all the remaining branches and offices to the ATM backbone. The Bank of Valletta network connects over 2000 users on a high speed data infrastructure; one of the largest on the Island.

We were also involved in the setup of the network and Internet security infrastructure of the Bank.  The setup includes a multi-stage highly secure system fit for a major financial institution like Bank of Valletta.

BoVnet and the related components are now being used to carry a number of value-add IP services such as video conferencing. Computime was entrusted with the provision of Polycom video conferencing solutions which improves communications between branches and also maximise on centralised resources for the benefit of the Bank's clients.

More recently, we have introduced an enhanced electronic payment solution using Hypercom equipment.  This eFTPOS-based solution, with modern touch screen technology and smart card capabilities, drastically improved the Bank's eFTPOS communication infrastructure.  Merchants now benefit from shorter transaction duration.