By: Ilan Buganim, FEVP Chief Technology and Data Officer, Bank Leumi

 I am happy to share with you Bank Leumi’s strategic technological endeavors which supported the launch of “Pepper” – Israel’s first stand-alone fully mobile banking platform.

At Bank Leumi, Israel’s second largest financial institution, we set a goal to stay one step ahead of the market in these days of digital transformation. We decided to launch a revolutionary mobile-only banking platform for our customers – Pepper. We were looking for the best private cloud solution to support this platform as well as mobile security solutions. We chose VMware for this mission as well as for other missions in the bank such as modernizing data centers and digital workspaces. Pepper was launched successfully with phenomenal response from our customers. For our customers, Pepper represents a new kind of banking – intuitive, digital and personalized, as they expect in this digital era.

We consider VMware to be a major partner for all of our IT moves, especially the transformational ones. The partnership was based both on shaping Leumi’s IT strategy and delivering the solutions with both Dell Technologies and VMware’s Professional Services.

VMware’s software defined data center infrastructure, cloud management platform and integrated digital workspace platform enabled our IT department to keep in pace with Leumi’s business and prove its relevancy to the bank at the time of the digital transformation.

VMware’s solutions were selected to be the baseline technologies to host the new Pepper mobile-only banking solution. In addition, VMware Horizon was chosen for the bank’s Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). VMware Workspace ONE enables the bank to increase customer service on modern mobile devices with required device security. The bank chose VMware vCloud Suite for cloud management because it gives financial service institutions the flexibility to innovate freely and run, manage, connect, and secure applications across clouds and devices in a common operating environment.

VDI is improving operations by enabling all the bank’s branches to adopt any changes to applications immediately, and any future changes in a simple and efficient manner. VMware NSX Data Center enables the bank to secure its application infrastructure and empower employees’ digital workspace so they can use any device for any app at any time.

VMware provided us maximum flexibility to select the best cloud environment to deploy and run Pepper while maintaining consistent operations that can support the integrity of the bank’s entire IT portfolio. VMware provided us the essential software foundation that delivers a common operating environment for on-premises data centers and for the leading public/managed clouds that are running Pepper.

We launched Pepper in an incredibly short time, and the uptake by the customers was extraordinary. Pepper builds on Bank Leumi’s 116-year heritage of innovative professional banking, which led to an approximate 30% domestic market share, with over $104B in public deposits and over $77B in loans (in fiscal 2017).

Furthermore, I am thrilled to declare that following the success of Pepper, we made the platform available for the rest of the industry. This is due to the fact that many banks are hampered by legacy technologies and can’t keep up with the pace of digital transformation. We are their accelerator since we’re revolutionizing the banking industry in Israel and globally, and that makes me proud.

Pepper and our overall digital transformation are the basis for future revolutions we intend to lead with our partner, VMware.

קטגוריה: חֲדָשׁוֹת

תגיות: Horizon, Leumi bank, NSX, VMware Cloud Foundation, WorkSpace One