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Synergy Credit Union serves the banking needs of
businesses and individuals across Saskatchewan, Canada.
Synergy has two main locations – a head office and a
regional head office – with 11 branch offices across the
province.
Within the past year or so, Synergy has expanded through
a series of mergers and acquisitions. With specialists
spread across different regions, day-to-day operations
involving such time-sensitive collaborative activities
as loan checking, filling-out and filing forms (i.e., loan
applications), etc., posed a challenge as management had
become more decentralized.
“We have over 250 users, from executive management to
first line member service reps, who require immediate
access to ‘live’ data, such as recently completed loan
application forms,” said Kyle Leasak, System Administrator
based at Synergy’s head office. “In order to provide member
services, we needed to find a system that synchronized branch
office files to our two main regional offices. What’s more,
these regional offices needed to be bilateral synchronized
in real-time, since our data is time-sensitive.
For instance, if a lender is asked for consumer mortgage
rates, he runs the risk of working from rates a day old if
the relevant data is not getting replicated every half hour
or so.”
Leasak had been “dabbling with sync for a while.
” They previously relied on a replication product
from Veritas, but it didn’t allow for real time bidirectional
synchronization between two offices. “We were struggling
with that,” said Leasak. “Veritas basically ran on a fixed
schedule, one way. Even when we were replicating data as
often as one hour apart, there were data ‘shortfalls’
between head offices. It was not very efficient in facilitating
data collaboration. It’s good for worksites and that kind
of stuff but it didn’t do what we needed to do, such as
bilateral synchronization.”
With their previous “solution” in place, users were saving
older files over newer versions. They were also sharing data
via email, which according to Leasak was an inefficient use of
resources. All of which prompted Leasak “to look elsewhere or
for something that more customizable.”
Leasak’s research lead him to download a 14 day trial
version of Peer Software’s PeerSync. He was initially
looking for a product that allowed for bi-lateral, real-time
synchronization, which PeerSync does. Another consideration
was its impact on network resources.
“We ran it in testing mode. With voice over IP,
video conferencing and regular banking traffic,
we needed something that put a minimal hit on line speed.
With Veritas, we noticed that this was an issue if not
configured correctly. PeerSync’s multi-threading and byte
replication had very little impact on line speed.”
Leasak wanted to set it up he could synchronize branch
office files to two main regional offices. The goal was
to have a local copy reside at the regional office, which
is then replicated between the two head offices…in real time.
Given the time sensitivity of the data, it was critical that
replication occurs almost instantly.
“PeerSync was easy to customize according to our very
specific needs. It’s very intuitive, each step made perfect
sense and was easy to follow.”
Whereas users would previously overwrite newer files
with older ones, PeerSync’s file locking feature eliminated
this problem. When a user opens a document, it is locked –
other users accessing that same document receive notification
that it is read only.
“The reporting was a lot better than other products
we’ve used and tested, including the Micrsosoft products
out there. The logs that we’ve seen are very informational.
We didn’t have any problems finding info we need or
troubleshooting errors. It worked as we expected it to work –
which applies not only to the reporting functionality, but to
the product as a whole…and given the vast majority of products
that under-perform and don’t meet expectations, that’s as
ringing an endorsement as I can give.”
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