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| The e-rsb control room at the Cartes Bancaires head
office. |
Mid-September, the former RCB network was phased out after having
processed more than 15 billion authorisations. It was decommissioned
by the Cartes Bancaires IT Department after a period of parallel use
with its replacement system, e-rsb. Having reached obsolescence, the
former system designed in the 1980s could no longer meet the future
requirements of banks and their customers such as the capacity to
integrate new international encryption standards or absorb the massive
increase in traffic. "The number of card authorisations tripled
in the ten years leading up to 2004 to more than 2 billion, and this
trend is expected to continue at a growth rate of 12 to 15% a year",
pointed out Pierre Juhen, Director IT and Networks for Cartes Bancaires.
The e-rsb has been designed with this in mind, and is already able
to process 800 authorisations a second and handle up to 4 billion
a year, which is twice the current volume.
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| ©
Alex Mahieu |
| Pierre Juhen, Director IT and
Networks for Cartes Bancaires. |
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Based on the international 3DES encryption standard, it provides an
extremely high level of security. Further, it operates on the IP (Internet
Protocol) transmission protocol standard which is less costly than
the former standard. "This will mean significant savings for
CB and its members of around 4 million euros a year, representing
a little over 10% of our budget", explained Vincent Billoir,
Manager CB User Guidance and Service Department.
Cartes Bancaires has invested heavily to complete this project. The
IT Department got the ball rolling back in 1997 with a preliminary
study that resulted in 1999 in the selection of a prime contractor.
The latter worked for three years on the new network's design. The
test phase, carried out in partnership with La Poste, Crédit
Mutuel, BNP, Europay France and Crédit Lyonnais, was closely
monitored. "It enabled us to iron out a few wrinkles, train teams
and detect faults", explained Vincent Billoir.
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| ©
Alex Mahieu |
| Vincent Billoir, Manager CB
User Guidance and Service Department. |
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Once the test phase was completed, 31st March 2004 was selected as
D-day to begin the migration to e-rsb. The entire IT team was on tenterhooks,
"A first operation on a new system of this importance is quite
stressful. You never know if there is going to be a problem",
admitted Pierre Juhen. Anecdotally, it was the owner of a card issued
by La Poste who was the first to use the new e-rsb network by making
a withdrawal from a Crédit Mutuel ATM. The migration was successfully
stepped up in April. A year later, by mid-July 2005, 92% of all transactions
were processed through e-rsb. The process went ahead smoothly, despite
the inherent risks in an operation of this type. "The difficulty
of a migration like this lies in having two systems operating in parallel
for several months, while maintaining the same level of service for
users", explained Vincent Billoir. "We also had to factor
in the specific needs of each bank; some have decentralised IT systems
which made the task just that bit more complicated." |
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