July 31, 2020

To Avoid Floods, Go Cloud

The last decade has seen a gradual shift from private, in-house data centers to SaaS (software as a service)–a cloud-based IT infrastructure that offers software system access using a subscription model. This approach allows businesses to reach a variety of software programs through a browser without setting everything up on company hardware.

The interest in SaaS is also related to the risks associated with poorly designed and maintained data centers. A recent rainfall incident in Lithuania only confirmed such fears: a burst water pipe flooded the State Enterprise Centre of Registers (SECR) servers and eventually brought multiple businesses to an indefinite halt.

Anton Zujev, the Head of Business Development and Sales at Fininbox, argues that cloud-based solutions should play a greater role when providing essential services, “SaaS allows our customers, who are licensed financial institutions, to focus greatly on their business while trusting the infrastructure and software maintenance to experts. In a digital society where more and more people are relying on contactless and online services, there is little benefit or advantage to managing critical IT systems and hardware in-house. The consequences of a system failure in the finance or healthcare industries can be too dire and not understanding risks in IT can be even worse.”

Fininbox provides a comprehensive and “off-the-shelf” banking SaaS which has proven to be more popular with fintechs in Lithuania and other EU countries. Assisting with software, IT infrastructure, support and development, as well as ensuring  smooth operations, according to Mr Zujev, “helps our clients save time and money when it comes to setting up.”

SaaS companies themselves require reliable data center partners who are capable of hosting the servers that power their applications. Credibility is achieved through carefully designing the data centers and guaranteeing regular maintenance.

“Everything is very important in order to ensure high availability services – from assessment of the environment when designing data center to crash tests during the certification, when systems are tested at maximum loads before the critical infrastructure is installed,” said Modestas Ancius, CEO at Baltneta, a cloud computing services and data transmission provider, and Fininbox’s partner since 2014. “For us, it is equally vital to run disaster recovery procedures’ tests to imitate possible emergencies and see how the system responds. The process of risk assessment is truly an ongoing one, as is our effort in training and preserving the most competent employees.”

Ensuring maximum security through adopting industry standards is also essential. This, together with the tests carried out during certification, warrants a continuing functioning even in the face of emergencies or regular check-ups.

“We have the ISO 27000 information security standard and are certified with an Uptime Institute Tier 3 Facility credential. To prevent any sort of disturbance for the next 20-25 years, we built the data center from scratch. Even the seemingly insignificant details can sometimes have a negative influence, so paying extra attention when identifying any possible risks and swiftly eliminating them is super important,” said Mr Ancius.