Johannesburg, 28 Jun 1998
Saambou Bank last week consolidated its plan for retail delivery growth by awarding a contract for central transaction switching and ATM driving software to Mosaic Software, the Cape Town based specialist in Electronic Funds Transfer software.
Saambou spent several months in evaluation of a number of options, which included solutions on traditional fault tolerant hardware, in-house development, and the Windows NT based Postilion solution from Mosaic.
The motivation for the contract is both an upgrade of the current ATM and transaction processing infrastructure as well as a move to allow Saambou to rapidly expand its retail delivery infrastructure.
"Participation in the expanding world of electronic transactions is one of the current requirements for a bank and Saambou had to ensure that it would be ready to face the challenge," says Hendrik Pelser, General Manager Electronic Banking for Saambou.
"Our evaluation, apart from ensuring that the solution we chose would meet our current needs and provide a high-availability, mission-critical solution, also focussed on future strategies of the solution provider. We wanted to make sure that we chose a partner that understands the forefront of today`s banking technologies."
Rudi Botha, Manager Electronic Banking for Saambou concurred: "Saambou did a very thorough evaluation of proposals. Apart from the current capabilities of the Postilion product, and its proven track record, we were also interested in the Internet Banking and Electronic Commerce directions of the product, which would enable us to deliver on our targets of expansion. Windows NT and SQL Server, the platform used by Postilion, provides the flexibility for growth."
The system will be implemented on a Compaq 7000 high-availability server, which provides Saambou with enough power for considerable transaction growth into the future.
The sale further extends Mosaic`s penetration into the South African banking market with Postilion. The system is already in use by NBS, Boland and ABSA.
"This shows, once again, that high-end fault tolerant platforms are no longer an automatic choice. The value proposition provided by WinTel platforms, with the reliability and availability of the Postilion solution on these platforms is becoming very hard to ignore, " says Francois van Schoor, General Manager for Mosaic`s distribution in Africa.
Mosaic Software is headquartered in Cape Town, South Africa, and is a member of PQ Holdings which is listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.
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