IBS Journal June 2015


‘It [Red Hat’s JBoss Fuse ESB] proves it is a low complexity platform


and it has a low entry cost for anyone to use it.’ Harry Margaritis, Commercial Bank of Qatar


future. The development started in the


is scheduled for deployment in May. The ESB is a key part of the new archi-


tecture and the bank selected the open source JBoss Fuse from Red Hat. Margaritis -


ings of both Tibco and IBM so is in a good position to compare these with the Red


Commercial Bank of Qatar being a stand- ards-oriented integration platform having a very low entry barrier in terms of complexi- ty and cost rather than adopting the ‘mega product and mega supplier’ or even worse trying to ‘build an integration middleware in-house and reinventing the wheel’. Pennant had no previous experience


with the Red Hat solution but was quickly able to pick it up and use it, which ‘validat- ed our choice of platform’, says Margaritis. ‘It proves it is a low complexity platform and it has a low entry cost for anyone to use it. It is also very well documented and straightforward to understand because it supports widely accepted technology standards.’ At the same time, there are costs associated with adopting it on an enter- prise basis, as there needs to be proper support and service, so the eventual total cost of ownership might prove to be little


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he feels. But the adherence to standards means there is a community that the bank can draw on and plenty of resources in the market.


One project that Pennant has worked on with the ESB is dubbed by the bank as ‘near real-time credit card payments’ with the solution allowing the payments to propagate the bank’s card management system in near real-time, instead of the pre- vious batch-based updating. For CRM, the bank has selected Micro-


soft Dynamics and, to complement this, it has chosen a Microsoft .Net-based BPM solution called K2 Blackpearl from a South Africa-based company, K2. The data ware-


linked to Microsoft’s BI suite. Another com- ponent has been Sungard’s Axe Credit Por- tal (ACP) platform. This supports the oper-


decisional requirements of credit applica- tion management for corporate customers. The bank has implemented modules for credit decisioning and risk-based pricing, data and document management, collater- al management and limits management. For the channels, the bank worked on


developments for mobile banking, which has had strong customer acceptance, and internet banking. Initially, Accenture


© IBS Intelligence 2015 www.ibsintelligence.com


worked on the mobile banking develop- ment, but the partner for this and internet banking is now TCS. The developments were done for the bank and it owns the


being support for multiple devices with a common code base using the Sencha Touch platform. ‘The rendering mecha- nism doesn’t yet have the clarity of a native application but that doesn’t really mat- ter for the transactional applications that we’re developing,’ says Margaritis. The fact that the mobile solution has gained the best rating in the region supports this, he adds. The bank has also used the platform


allowing them to do tasks such as submit- ting leave requests, checking their balances and viewing pay slips. The customer-centric architecture,


underpinned by the CRM and ESB, means that Commercial Bank is moving away from traditional siloes. A number of applica- tions are being eliminated along the way but, for the time-being at least, the old core banking system remains. The work of the last couple of years shows what can be achieved taking a route that surrounds, adds value to, and in some areas reduces, the scope of the core banking system with- out all of the lengthy upheaval of replacing it per se.


case study: commercial bank of qatar


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