Case study: Magnet

Background

Namibian owned and locally grown and developed Magnet Bureau de Change is the largest agency for Western Union Money Transfer in the country and mainly services the visiting foreign market.

Its customers largely comprise travellers who descend on the country's capital, Windhoek, for business or as part of the influx of tourists who form part of the country's thriving safari industry.

Here Magnet Bureau de Change facilitates international money exchange and transfers via its 11-strong branch networks across the country, offering a variety of financial services to individuals, whether it be exchanging one currency for another or sending and receiving money via Western Union.

With a largely migrant local workforce reliant on money transfer facilities to send money home to outlying areas from Windhoek, Magnet also identified the opportunity to grow its money exchange and transfer business, and has opened additional branches across Namibia in Ausspannplatz, Swakopmund and Walvisbay.

Challenge

In line with its goal to bridge the gap of distance while providing superior, reliable, and efficient service, Magnet Bureau de Change saw the need to upgrade and improve their traditional IT infrastructure.

System downtime at its airport kiosk was not only impacting the organisation's bottom line, but was also resulting in huge reputational damage, whereby hordes of tourists would be faced with the inconvenience and irritation of not having access to funds.

Solution

To meet the challenge of better performance and increased availability, Magnet Bureau de Change opted for Stratus Technologies ftServer hardware and storage solution.

Stratus ftServer systems prevent downtime and data loss for essential business applications and services. These servers eliminate the complexity and costs of deploying and managing alternative high-availability and virtualisation software solutions and are ideal for regional offices and corporate data centres.

Purpose-built fault-tolerant hardware, Automated Uptime Layer software, and proactive 24/7/365 monitoring services combine to provide an affordable always-on solution unmatched by conventional servers or low-end clusters.

Result

Following implementation to date, Magnet has experienced an always-on computing environment with no outages, with customers being able to enjoy ongoing access to monetary transfers and exchange.

Commenting on the successful outcome, Charlton Cloete, Head of IT at Magnet, said: "We had growing concerns for uptime on our mission-critical applications as our business was expanding quite fast; the ftServer package has eased those concerns quite gracefully with the lockstep technology and the proactive monitoring. Having the flexibility to ensure that we maintain our current growth and complete maintenance with basically no downtime, the ftServer has proved to be an essential part of our infrastructure and, in turn, our success."