Postbank, one of Germany's largest and best known financial services providers, has been synonymous with security and trust since 1909. Postbank's thousands of employees provide diversified services - including payment transactions, financing, and investments - to approximately 13 million private customers and 300,000 businesses. Based in Bonn, Postbank runs the most extensive branch network of any bank in Germany.

Postbank operations involve massive amounts of customer and transaction data - 200 terabytes of it - which must be accessible within seconds to some 6,000 employees. In 1998, the bank adopted SAP as its core banking application. For several years after that, Postbank archived the data coming out of SAP and other systems on a legacy platform. However, that platform delivered inadequate throughput and was reaching end of life.

This was especially problematic because, in addition to running its own operations, Postbank aimed to launch an ancillary business providing archiving services to other financial institutions. To support business growth on all fronts, Postbank needed a scalable archiving solution that delivered security segregation and the ability to integrate with third-party repositories. Because business and regulatory climates are always changing, the solution also had to be flexible.

"We identified our crucial requirements," said Gerold Blasig, Project Manager at Postbank's Competence Center Channels, Services & Sales. "First, we needed a solution that could handle the very high volumes of data that must be administered, archived and researched. So, scalability was paramount. Second, our insourcing business needed to take data in from multiple sources and segregate them in different client systems for secure access rights. Finally, we needed a system that could adapt. For example, no one could have known, in 2003 when we were looking for a solution, about the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requirements going into effect May 2018. But we knew we needed to keep pace with change."

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"Postbank came to ASG at a time when we needed to replace an end-of-life archiving system for our SAP core banking system. Since then, our industry and our IT needs have changed; Postbank has grown, expanded its services, merged with Deutsche Bank's retail business, and faced new regulatory requirements. Through it all, Mobius has performed seamlessly. What's more, ASG has continuously extended the solution's capabilities to keep them robust and adaptive. Mobius is not only a proven technology, it keeps pace with an evolving future."

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From a list of several dozen solution vendors, Postbank narrowed the field down to three contenders: the provider of its legacy system, ASG Technologies, and one other supplier. The bank evaluated these vendors' offerings against 150 weighted criteria and then reviewed competing presentations. ASG Mobius came out on top. A robust repository with a fully integrated Enterprise Content Management System, Mobius provides granular policy management, flexible content services, and near-infinite horizontal scaling. Postbank's solution includes Mobius Total Content Integrator, enabling search and access across disparate repositories.

"Our selection team chose Mobius unanimously in 2004, and the decision has proved to be the right one," explained Blasig. "Mobius scaled to enable our insourcing business and our merger with Deutsche Bank. It adapted to new European Union regulatory requirements. Mobius archives massive amounts of data from multiple sources and enables secure access to it within seconds. Mobius is scalable, reliable, and it offers a structured way to accommodate change requests quickly, with high quality. That makes it adaptable to evolving business and IT needs."

Postbank first implemented Mobius in 2006, and time has proven that it was the right decision. Right from the start, Mobius delivered the scalability to integrate data from Deutsche Bank's and other banks' legacy content management systems without costly migrations.

In 2016, the European Union Parliament approved stringent new GDPR regulations for granular and event-based retention and deletion. With enforcement scheduled to start in May 2018, many enterprises struggled to comply. Postbank moved forward by implementing SAP NetWeaver Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) for rules-based management of live and archived data. ASG built a Mobius adapter to communicate directly with ILM - and gained SAP certification by satisfying WebDAV interface standards. As part of this enhanced solution, Mobius Records Manager enables federated management of electronic records across systems - in-place and, in their original formats - through an intuitive, Web-based interface.

"For years, we have stayed in close contact with ASG's development and support departments, and received an uncommonly high level of productive cooperation," Blasig said. "ASG is always willing to upgrade its solution in response to our emerging needs. It's a win/win situation: We get our requirements implemented quickly, while ASG continuously modernises Mobius to meet new market demands. We're especially impressed with the advances in streamlined Application Programming Interfaces; ASG invests in making its products better and better."

Today, Postbank archives 200 terabytes of critical business and customer data - including monetary transactions, account statements, account files, and reports from multiple banking activities - independent of the originating application. This includes billions of documents and SAP datasets - up to 30 million documents per day, of 150 document and data types. Bank staff can access the data securely within seconds, not minutes - supporting business efficiency and good customer service.

If the bank ever needs to restore data for any reason, it can do so out of the stored software packages in the archive. Meanwhile, Postbank's ancillary business thrives with the ability to serve other financial institutions, and the bank stands ready to address emerging demands for digitalisation and enhanced customer access to information.

"Postbank came to ASG at a time when we needed to replace an end-of-life archiving system for our SAP core banking system," Blasig said. "Since then, our industry and our IT needs have changed; Postbank has grown, expanded its services, merged with Deutsche Bank's retail business, and faced new regulatory requirements. Through it all, Mobius has performed seamlessly. What's more, ASG has continuously extended the solution's capabilities to keep them robust and adaptive. Mobius is not only a proven technology, it keeps pace with an evolving future."

The CEO of Postbank Systems AG, Dr. Thomas Mangel, concludes: "As a leading financial services provider in Germany, Postbank provides high quality services to more than 13 million retail and business customers. Everything we do is driven by technology and data. For more than a decade, Postbank has relied on ASG Mobius as the partner for its strategic data archiving and retrieval solution."

More info: www.asg.com