Stratus' continuous availability platform ensures that Direct Transact can focus on the business and not the risk of downtime.
Even with the 99.999% availability claimed by selected infrastructure vendors, the couple of minutes lost during system failures each year can be a serious limitation towards business success.
However, financial bloodletting does not stem from lost run-rate revenue alone.
The reputational risk suffered through the inability to render a service to customers (who invariably rely heavily on the services daily) is also a strong contributor to the cost of downtime.
Depending on what the organisation experiencing the system outage does for a living, and when the downtime takes place, the results can be devastating - in some cases, downtime can even eliminate an organisation from the game.
For Direct Transact, who specialise in the development and deployment of software for the financial services and retail markets, and provides electronic switching services for card-based and EFT transactions to some of the country's most prolific financial institutions, downtime is not an option.
When it came to finding a platform for its IT systems, Direct Transact was not prepared to compromise. Its decision to make use of Stratus technology in the heart of its data centre has made all the difference.
With zero unplanned downtime experienced in seven years, the company has a perfect record of continuous availability - then again, this is nothing less than Direct Transact's clients would expect.
Rudi Botha, IT Executive of Direct Transact, states that considering the scale of services his company provides to its clients, and its record of continuous availability, Stratus has earned its stripes as the most reliable and robust platform available in the market today.
Any hardware glitches experienced have never affected the service that Direct Transact renders to its clients.
Dick Sharod, country manager of Stratus South Africa, also commented that due to Stratus solutions being architected with 100% redundancy, a failing hardware component does not influence the availability of the system. If any components require replacement, the server need not be brought down - it simply requires the removal of failed components from the chassis and replacing them with new components.
The level of peace of mind and reliability for a server to continue operating, notwithstanding components being replaced, is never a given, but a huge positive for business sustainability.
"While Stratus continues to deliver this level of service and availability to Direct Transact, a technology change away from Stratus would clearly not be an option. Its solutions are truly reliable, cost-effective to manage and backed by one of the most highly-skilled and professional service organisations worldwide." concludes Botha.
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