Nutanix's hyperconverged infrastructure ensures business continuity for Argentina's financial institution.
Banco Patagonia, a leading financial institution in Argentina, serves a vast clientele ranging from individual consumers to corporations, also including the agricultural segment, SMEs, the public sector, and universities, among others, offering services in over 200 locations around the country. As part of the Banco do Brasil Group, Banco Patagonia prides itself on its robust service offerings and its strategic role as the financial agent for the province of Rio Negro and its municipalities.
The bank employs around 3,000 individuals, and its Technology and Digital Business department is critical to supporting the infrastructure required to service its extensive network and clients. Nutanix's solutions provided the necessary partnership to streamline Banco Patagonia’s IT infrastructure, ensuring business continuity and operational efficiency.
Enhanced operational resilience
Implementing Nutanix solutions boosted operations efficiency when rapid adjustments were necessary.
Scalability and flexibility in IT operations
Nutanix's hyperconverged infrastructure allowed dynamic resource scaling in the financial sector, where demand can fluctuate unpredictably.
Time and cost savings
Simplified administration and management processes reduce the need for multiple layers of bureaucracy, allowing the bank to streamline operations and reduce licensing costs.
Improved disaster recovery
The transition to Nutanix's environment improved the bank's disaster recovery capabilities by simplifying and streamlining data replication and processes between their active-active data centers.
Nutanix solves and simplifies our day-to-day work. Today, we have specialists in storage, networking, SAN, and virtualization operating systems. Nutanix technology helps us avoid a few layers of bureaucracy and administration.
As Banco Patagonia grew and evolved, its IT infrastructure faced big challenges. The legacy systems needed to be improved to keep pace with its expanding operations, and traditional IT solutions became a bottleneck for growth. Fabián Tomé, IT Architecture, PMO, and Governance Manager at Banco Patagonia, explained how their business continuity relied on remote sites with pre-configured machines: "Until we implemented Nutanix, everything related to business continuity planning implied having remote sites with machines configured for employees to work from." These configurations proved to be inadequate, resulting in unsatisfactory tests and making continuity efforts unreliable.
Alejandro Panteón, Technology and Production Manager, shed light on the challenges Banco Patagonia faced with traditional technology: "Growing and renewing data center technology, with traditional computer technology, SAN plus external storage, is always a big pain, a big project, a big move with little added value and high risks."
The decision to implement Nutanix’s hyperconverged infrastructure was driven by the need for a robust, flexible, and scalable IT environment that could adapt quickly to the bank’s operational demands and improve disaster recovery processes. Banco Patagonia utilized a range of Nutanix products, including the Acropolis Hypervisor (AHV), Files, and Move, among others, to overhaul its IT infrastructure.
The integration of these solutions enabled the virtualization of desktop environments using Citrix, significantly improving remote access capabilities. Nutanix proved invaluable during the pandemic when the bank needed to rapidly transition to remote work, as recounted by Alejandro: "We stopped the desktop virtualization project and initially used it to virtualize remote accesses. Then we made Citrix available on Nutanix, enabling remote workstations."
Additionally, Nutanix provided "speed of deployment, reliability, and the simplicity of doing anything," according to Fabián, leading to more efficient management. Banco Patagonia virtualized nearly 100% of their applications, eliminating local installations and making employees productive within minutes, further streamlining operations and enhancing productivity
The implementation of Nutanix technology transformed Banco Patagonia's IT operations, leading to significant improvements in several areas:
Operational efficiency
The adoption of Nutanix technology marked a substantial improvement in Banco Patagonia's operational efficiency. By starting to transition to a virtual desktop infrastructure and utilizing Nutanix's streamlined processes, the bank significantly reduced the time and resources needed to manage its IT operations, specifically in cases of disaster recovery. Fabián highlighted the ease of deployment as a critical advantage, noting that "the simplicity or how easy it is to do anything" with Nutanix allowed the IT team to focus more on planned initiatives than maintaining and troubleshooting infrastructure. This efficiency gain reduced costs and improved the overall agility of the bank's IT services.
Reliability and uptime
Reliability and uptime are crucial in the banking sector, where downtime can directly impact customer trust and financial outcomes. With Nutanix, Banco Patagonia experienced remarkable system stability and improvement in availability. The new hyperconverged infrastructure ensured that operations could be maintained continuously with minimal disruptions. Fabián and Alejandro both reported a significant reduction in downtime, with the former stating, "We didn't have downtime in Nutanix; events that were seen on the user side," which underscores the robustness of the Nutanix platform in supporting critical banking operations.
Scalability and flexibility
Scalability and flexibility were the primary drivers for Banco Patagonia's shift to Nutanix. The bank required an IT environment that could dynamically scale to meet fluctuating demands without requiring extensive lead times or capital expenditures. Nutanix’s solution provided this capability, allowing Banco Patagonia to efficiently manage resources in line with business needs.
Banco Patagonia is planning further expansions in its use of Nutanix technology. "We are looking forward to expanding. This year, 2024, a transformation of the electronic channels infrastructure began, and it will be fully executed on the Nutanix platform," Fabián stated. The plan includes migrating existing loads and adopting newer technologies like Red Hat OpenShift to enhance their service offerings further.
The integration of Nutanix solutions into Banco Patagonia’s IT framework not only resolved their immediate operational challenges but also set a foundation for continuous improvement and innovation, ensuring the bank remains at the forefront of the financial services industry in Argentina.
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1/2025