Banks and other financial services and institutions around the world have always been front in line when it comes to adopting cutting edge technologies. This is as a result of their particular operating environments: banks face the same common challenges associated with all large organisations, but have their own unique challenges to contend with too. 
In particular, financial services organisations face complex network operations and security challenges. In financial services, IT infrastructure is about high-speed transaction processing and the ability to maintain that speed throughout wild variations in load and unpredictable surges in transaction volumes.
“Because performance is critical in the financial services industry, these companies invest heavily in sophisticated network technology to achieve improved performance. Despite these investments, there is still a lack of granular, accurate, or understandable information on where to focus efforts to improve network performance,” says Gerald Naidoo, CEO of Logikal Consulting, local implementation partner of NetScout.
“When issues are identified, they must be resolved quickly. NetScout offers comprehensive management solutions to address the unique technology and business needs of financial-based industries.”
This solution is being used by SBV Services (SBV), a company specialising in providing end-to-end solutions across the entire cash supply chain, as well as a broad spectrum of risk consulting and training services.
“NetScout provides SBV with relevant, service-oriented insight that aligns with how the company uses these services to efficiently deliver consistent and high-quality service levels,” explains Naidoo.
In addition, NetScout offers forensics and analysis capabilities that allow post-event forensic analysis of security and service degradation incidents, as well as application and availability management with unified realtime and historical views for critical, deep-packet visibility. Service and policy validation also ensures that end-users have access to the services they need to meet goals.
Using its extensive industry knowledge, combined with its partnership with NetScout, Logikal Consulting recommended and implemented the solution for SBV based on its identification of the company’s needs.
“The inherent problem with all the new technology being used in financial services is that it is difficult to track and monitor. Many traditional monitoring tools simply don’t have the visibility required. Our understanding of the industry, as well as an analysis of SBV’s needs, led to us recommending the nGenius solution from NetScout,” says Naidoo.
“It not only supports efficiency and productivity initiatives to ensure that SBV’s services are always available, it provides visibility into all of its network activity to enable intelligent alarms for performance issues.”
“The NetScout implementation in SBV went live in March 2013 – the implementation was quick and seamless with no downtime to our business and we are already reaping the benefits.  SBV not only requires that its services are uninterrupted, but also that it has granular insight into its network to guarantee a seamless service to its clients,” explains Ian Plaatjes, CIO of SBV Services.
“The NetScout solution offers us intelligent early warning with automated detection to predict and prevent network and application performance degradations before they occur, as well as planning and optimisation capabilities that enables SBV to better understand how resources are being consumed to ensure that we provide our customers with high-quality service levels.”