Bank Mega Boosts Its SuperApp Resilience and Performance with F5
Bank Mega is one of the leading financial institution headquartered in Jakarta, Indonesia. The success of its M-Smile SuperApp required load balancing and security solutions that could handle the surge in traffic and make it easier to manage the app as its use continues to grow.
Business Challenge
Bank Mega, one of Indonesia’s leading financial institutions, channels its digital innovation through its M-Smile (Mega Smart Mobile) SuperApp, which offers a wide array of personal and business banking services. This strong and scalable financial SuperApp orchestrates end-to-end customer journeys beyond financial services.
By November 2023, the M-Smile application had amassed a significant user base, reaching more than 716,000 users, an impressive 35.89% YoY growth. As the user base continued to expand, the bank was driven to enhance functionality and customer experience. However, the growth outpaced the existing load balancing capacity, leading to a rapid and sustained surge in traffic. This influx of traffic imposed heightened operational challenges, which hindered round-the-clock accessibility and responsive application performance.
Managing application delivery became a significant operational hurdle, particularly in the application’s ability to scale without overloading its server. To successfully meet the bank’s objectives and continue to scale the app, Bank Mega needed to establish a strong security posture for M-Smile, one that effectively distributes and manages customer traffic without disruption and incidents. A multifaceted approach was required to effectively manage traffic while providing a frictionless customer experience.
Solutions
Bank Mega collaborated closely with F5 and decided to implement BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) and BIG-IP Advanced Web Application Firewall (WAF). The solutions would assist in the strategic distribution of application traffic across resilient and available servers, effectively eliminating all single points of failure and ensuring consistent, high availability. This approach would effectively handle the increased traffic volumes and delivered a significantly improved and more interactive user experience.
Dedy Curyani, Bank Mega’s Head of IT Infrastructure, Service & Operations, says, “We needed a solution that we could trust unequivocally. The F5 BIG-IP solution provided a proven and reliable experience, and given our focus on security, we couldn’t afford to take any chances.”
To effectively manage increasing traffic and ensure continuous network performance, the load balancing solution was implemented using DNS-based traffic distribution and a redundant configuration. Detailed deployment guides simplified the implementation. Leveraging BIG-IP DNS for global load balancing to achieve georedundancy across two sites, the F5 solution extended the bank’s load balancing capabilities beyond traditional web servers, encompassing critical RADIUS and NTP servers within the application environment.
Following the implementation, the network and services have consistently displayed exceptional reliability and efficiency, successfully eliminating both planned and unplanned downtime. This has also streamlined day-to-day management, making it more efficient and user friendly. Additionally, the solution enabled traffic control through customized iRules, enabled real-time application health monitoring, and provided detailed analytics to optimize application performance.
Dedy highlighted the transformative impact of the solution, saying, “Advanced server health monitoring and traffic management functionality provided us greater intelligence and control in application delivery than what we had before.”
Results
Seamless scaling for consistent high availability
Bank Mega can now scale its app infrastructure in a more agile and flexible manner, accommodating dynamic traffic patterns, including daily peaks, as well as anticipated future growth. The solution eliminates single points of failure and ensures consistent high availability. Given the importance of reliability and performance in digital banking, the solution has enabled Bank Mega to confidently continue its digital transformation journey.
Minimal app downtime for better CX
The F5 solution established stable and trouble-free app operation. This eliminated both planned and unplanned application interruptions and improved the customer experience (CX), achieving exceptional customer satisfaction and significant cost reduction.
Simplified app deployment and increased efficiency
Bank Mega can easily deploy and move applications. The F5 solution also reduced costs, gave the bank’s IT team more flexibility in how they set things up, and made their work more efficient.
- Seamless scaling for consistent high availability
- Minimal app downtime for better CX
- Simplified app deployment and increased efficiency
- Substantial user growth posing scalability challenges
- Server overload presenting operational challenges
- Safeguarding sensitive financial and personal data