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Case Study

Case Study — Core Banking (Oracle FLEXCUBE)

Client: Pan-African banking group (name withheld)
Scope: Core banking (Oracle FLEXCUBE), digital channels, middleware, and DC/DR across multiple African markets
Objective: Improve reliability, performance, and audit readiness across countries while enabling future cloud/hybrid choices.

Executive Summary

  • This case study reflects programs personally delivered by our principal consultant over 15+ years with pan-African banks—in an individual capacity prior to founding Vimarsaa—focused on banking infrastructure modernization of Oracle FLEXCUBE estates.
  • Work spanned core banking systems, data center and disaster recovery topology, and multi-country operations requiring high availability and data residency.

  • Through structured capacity planning and performance tuning, we stabilized peak-day loads across high-volume payments, card/ATM, mobile money, and batch windows.

  • Engagements delivered zero-downtime cutovers for core banking upgrades and migrations, with rehearsed rollbacks and blue/green deployment patterns.

  • Banking infrastructure performance optimization targeted DB/WebLogic/OHS stacks, connection pools, query/partition design, and JVM/I/O tuning.

  • DR assurance was verified with failover drills, recovery runbooks, and RPO/RTO targets aligned to business services for sustained uptime.

  • API-led integration and event-driven patterns replaced brittle links, enabling secure partner connectivity and modern banking message flows.

  • Hybrid cloud and on-premises options were evaluated via landing zones, security baselines, and reversible pilots to de-risk adoption.

  • Compliance operations established audit-ready evidence mapped to regulatory obligations and internal policies, with clear owner accountability.

  • Standardized observability for banking infrastructure unified logs, metrics, and traces to cut mean time to detect across core, middleware, and channels.

  • Where appropriate, cross-layer correlation and guided auto-healing were enabled via a partner AIOps platform (delivered with QPH)—fully optional.

  • Operating models introduced SLOs, on-call health, and automation-first runbooks to reduce toil and MTTR.

  • Representative outcomes included four-nines availability, improved p95 latency at peak, and days—not weeks—for audit pack assembly (results vary by context).

  • These anonymized lessons form a repeatable banking infrastructure modernization playbook that Vimarsaa now applies in advisory, implementation, and integration roles.

Business Challenges

  • Reliability at peak: EOD/EOM spikes, salary runs, instant-payment surges, card/ATM bursts, and mobile-money reconciliations.
  • Aging platforms: Mixed hardware/OS baselines, fragmented runbooks across DC/DR and countries.
  • Change risk: Limited rehearsal/rollback for core and middleware upgrades.
  • Compliance pressure: PCI DSS/ISO 27001, SWIFT CSP, and applicable central-bank/data-protection requirements with scattered evidence.
  • Cost & scale: Unclear headroom for growth; need options for hybrid/cloud and regional DR.

Strategic Deliverables, Tailored to Your Business

  1. Consulting for Banking IT Infra Operations
    • Unified runbooks and SLOs; golden images/standard builds; controlled change windows and approvals.
  2. Capacity Planning & Implementation for Banking Applications
    • Infrastructure upgrade: Compute/storage/network refresh; HA patterns; DC/DR alignment across regions.
    • Banking application upgrade: FLEXCUBE and dependent middleware (DB/WebLogic/OHS) version uplift with full rehearsal.
    • Migration to third-party components (where relevant): Safer swaps via API/ESB patterns.
    • Cloud/Hybrid options: Landing-zone designs, data-residency patterns, reversible pilots.
  3. Performance Assessment & Consolidation
    • TPS/latency baselines, JVM/DB tuning, pools/threads, query/partition improvements; consolidation where feasible.
  4. Legacy Data Archiving & Regulation Planning
    • Retention schedules, WORM/immutable tiers, retrieval SLAs for audits, privacy-aligned deletion workflows.
  5. AIOps (Partner-Delivered via QPH)
    • Optional partner AIOps platform (QPH) for cross-layer correlation, noise suppression, RCA, and guided auto-healing. (Vimarsaa provides advisory/implementation; platform IP/licensing remain with QPH.)

Our Approach 

  1. Stabilize & Baseline:
    Asset & dependency map; capacity headroom; hot-spot analysis (EOD/EOM, salary runs, festive peaks); compliance posture per country.
  2. Plan & Rehearse:
    Sizing workbook (CPU/mem/IOPS/latency, network), DR RPO/RTO targets, cutover playbooks with go/no-go and rollback drills.
  3. Implement:
    DC/DR uplift, FLEXCUBE & middleware upgrades, config hardening, API/ESB refactors, multi-country rollout plan, optional hybrid pilots.
  4. Assure:
    Performance/soak tests, chaos & failover drills, evidence capture mapped to PCI DSS/ISO 27001, SWIFT CSP, and applicable data-protection laws (e.g., GDPR/POPIA/NDPR); access reviews (RBAC/PAM).
  5. Operate & Transfer:
    Runbooks, SLO dashboards, quarterly DR rehearsals, knowledge transfer to regional teams.

Architecture Highlights (conceptual)

    • Active-standby or active-active DC/DR with quorum decisions and tested failover across regions.
    • Oracle-aware patterns (RAC/ASM/Data Guard where applicable) and WebLogic/OHS clusters.
    • API/ESB for core ↔ channels ↔ partners; support for instant-payment rails, mobile-money interfaces, and ISO 20022 messaging where relevant.
    • Observability: Unified logs/metrics/traces; optional partner AIOps (QPH) for correlation/RCA & guided auto-healing.
    • Compliance: Evidence pipelines, immutable backups, WORM/retention tiers, maker–checker controls.

Representative Outcomes

  • 99.9–99.99% service availability targets with drilled failovers
  • 30–45% improvement in p95 transaction latency on peak windows after tuning
  • 40–60% faster MTTR via better triage & runbooks (with/without AIOps)
  • Days, not weeks, to assemble audit packs due to automated evidence capture
    *Outcomes are indicative; actuals vary by environment and scope.

Deliverables Handed Over

Sizing & Capacity Workbook; HLD/LLD architectures; Cutover & Rollback Playbooks; DR Drill Reports; Performance Assessment Report; Compliance Evidence Workbook; Data-Archiving & Retention Policy; Operations Runbooks & SLO pack.

Partner note

Select observability & AIOps capabilities are delivered with our consulting solution partner, QuantlliPulseHUB Pvt. Ltd. (QPH). Vimarsaa provides advisory, integration, and operations enablement; platform IP and licensing remain with QPH.

Oracle and FLEXCUBE are trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Vimarsaa is not affiliated with or endorsed by Oracle.

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