IBM and Bank of Beirut today announced that they had completed implementation of a five-year agreement to provide a comprehensive recovery solution for the Bank's London subsidiary. Now, should a disaster occur, the solution will enable the bank to consistently and reliably recover its data in a short time frame.

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Bank of Beirut is one of the largest banks in the Lebanon. Its London subsidiary which was established in 2002, but has operated in London as a branch for more than 25 years, provides private and corporate banking services for Bank of Beirut's Lebanese customer's operating in the UK and across the Middle East and North and West Africa. In more recent times the bank has concentrated on developing its correspondent banking and trade finance services to both Lebanese and non-Lebanese customers. As the client base has grown, the bank has continued to test its recovery positions.

Martin Osborne, Manager Administration at Bank of Beirut said "We faced a challenge every time we carried out a recovery test, having to build our servers from scratch, including loading and configuring the operating system and restoring the data. This created a strain on our IT resources and we realised that we needed a more consistent and reliable data backup and recovery solution to ensure that we could guarantee the bank's capability to provide increased resiliency and business recovery at times of need."

Tosca Colangeli, Director IBM UKI Business Continuity & Resiliency Services said "IBM has implemented an Information Protection Service to back up selected data on Bank of Beirut (UK) Ltd's production servers locally then replicate to the secure data repository. The solution includes new servers permanently powered on in the recovery centre that have backup operating systems already loaded and are ready to receive their data in case of a test or a disaster."

This solution will enable the bank to recover its data quickly, easily and consistently allowing tests to be completed successfully, ensuring that the bank meets its regulatory requirements and gains confidence in its ability to recover its London operations.

IBM Information Protection Services allow clients to prioritise backup, retention and retrieval, so you can have virtually anywhere, anytime access to information in the extended enterprise. The services also deliver high levels of security and availability and help address stringent standards for data protection, business and systems continuity, disaster recovery and regulatory compliance. Using pay-as-you-use pricing, it provides robust protection across data centers, branch offices and remote laptops.

  The contract was signed in October 2008.

  Additional Information

For more information on Bank of Beirut (UK) Ltd, visit www.bankofbeirut.co.uk

  For more information on IBM, visit www.ibm.com/uk

  Contacts

  IBM
  Ken Saunders
  saundken@uk.ibm.com
  +44 (0)207 021 8422

  Aliza Fischer
  afischer@us.ibm.com
  917-472-3721

First Call Analyst:
FCMN Contact: afische@us.ibm.com

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SOURCE: IBM