For 2021, IR enhances enterprise resilience through IR Transact

Tragedy struck Nashville, Tennessee, in the early hours of Christmas Day and the disruption that followed surprised many. An explosion outside a major AT&T facility “triggered a cascade of technological failures that disrupted daily life and imperiled emergency services, offering a sobering reminder of the fragility of the nation’s critical communications systems, according to national security experts.”

This was how the press reported the outages that followed, but one telling observation came in a National Security article published in the December 28, 2020, issue of the Washington Post:

“Experts applauded the telecommunications giant for responding quickly to the explosion by deploying portable cellular sites to help restore some service.

“Key to constructing systems that can withstand attacks and natural disasters — and recover quickly — is avoiding a single point of failure, they said.

“For years, federal authorities had been working with state and local governments to ensure the resiliency of the 911 system, particularly in the wake of a terrorist attack or natural disaster.”

Avoiding single points of failure; ensuring resiliency. For those providing support for payments systems, particularly when implemented on HPE NonStop systems, this is language that they all recognize and have embraced for many years. Oftentimes, for many decades! Point is, as important as communications networks are today, they are but one piece of the critical infrastructure we often take for granted. When the availability of much-needed services is compromised, communities can be adversely affected.

In an IDC report Mission Critical and Game Changing: Unified Communications and Collaboration in Financial Services, sponsored by IR and referenced in the post of October, 2020, UC&C: The future of the banking and finance industry it highlighted how big an impact unified communications and collaboration was having on Digital Transformation (DX). Reading through the report it was hard to miss two very important points:

• Extreme availability – UC&C is mission critical. Ensuring services are available 24/7 for customers, prospects, partners, vendors, and employees.
• Data heavy – Gaining customer intelligence based on actual real-time data from the customers themselves is paramount.

Increasing an enterprises’ resilience is best served through the provision of extreme availability. It’s also recognition that all applications today are mission critical and that interacting with communities in real time has become the new normal.

IR recently rebranded its solution suites with names that reflect their primary focus areas; IR Collaborate, IR Transact and IR Infrastructure. But while the names have changed, the core objective remains the same – to simplify the complexity of these mission critical environments, making them easier to manage and more resilient.

The business value of all three solution suites comes from managing and monitoring applications, then being able to analyze transaction data, all while taking steps to optimize every aspect of the underlying mission-critical infrastructure.

In the post of January 3, 2021, to the Payments Blog by Kate Daley, Navigating changing times with real-time transaction insights, Daley asks the question:

“It’s been a tough year, but as the economy slowly begins to rebound, its trajectory is clearly in the direction of optimizing the new technologies that represent consumer demands – and changes in purchasing behavior.

“But what will this new normal mean for payments organizations, as they struggle to retool their teams and technology?”

Resilience through availability; real-time insight into mission-critical applications! This is well understood by those who have depended upon HPE NonStop systems to run their most mission critical applications, and the IR Transact suite of solutions can bring “real-time visibility to your entire payments environment,” writes Daley. “Merchants, acquirers and payments processors can gain unparalleled insights into transactions and trends, streamlining the payments experience, from end-to-end.”

The disruption to the daily lives of so many that came about following the destruction of the Nashville AT&T facility happened at a time when there is a global pandemic creating even greater disruption to communities everywhere. “The COVID-19 crisis has had an unprecedented impact on transactions and payment flows worldwide,” was how Daley introduced her post before adding, “For every organization, from retail to banks, the answer to maintaining a competitive edge lies in having access to real-time actionable transaction insights.”

Making sure your infrastructure is resilient is a reminder of our need for even greater attention being given to the tools and solutions on hand to monitor and manage what keeps all of our mission-critical applications operating. With IR, the NonStop community has a proven solution that addresses the maintenance of a resilient infrastructure and has done so for many decades. If you have as yet not read in full the posts to the IR blog referenced here or you had difficulties following the hyperlinks, then simply cut and paste these urls into your favorite browser:

UC&C: The future of the banking and finance industry
https://www.ir.com/blog/communications/ucc-the-future-of-the-banking-and-finance-industry

Navigating changing times with real-time transaction insights
https://www.ir.com/blog/payments/navigating-changing-times-with-real-time-transaction-insights

IR also hosted a webinar on the key 2021 Payments Outlook [Key Trends to Watch] and on January 20 there will be a live demo featuring IR Transact presented by Adolfo Ochoa, Senior Solutions Engineer. Don’t miss any of these opportunities to find out more about how IR aids resiliency of today’s all-important infrastructure.

Should you have any questions or would like to learn more, please don’t hesitate to reach out to your IR sales team. We look forward to addressing any topic that may be of interest to you and your enterprise.

Kevin Johnson,
VP Sales – Payments Performance Monitoring
www.ir.com