- Ultra secure primary data centre at The Bunker enhanced to cope with future growth in SWIFT traffic

LONDON, 28 May, 2009 – SMA Financial (www.sma.co.uk), SWIFT Regional partner for UK, Eire, Channel Islands and the Nordics today announced that it has completed an infrastructure upgrade at its primary data centre which is housed in The Bunker, an ultra secure facility.  The resulting capacity increase will support future growth of the SMA Bureau Service whilst providing the very highest levels of security and resilience which is essential in today’s demanding environment where very high levels of service uptime are required.

SMA’s investment in this infrastructure ensures that it can maintain high levels of service to customers connecting to the Bureau Service for critical financial messaging whilst building systems for the future which can accommodate significant growth in the use of SWIFT and other messaging traffic. In the unlikely event of the primary centre becoming unavailable, Bureau Service operations are switched to SMA’s secondary site, ensuring there is minimal interruption to business and service continuity for bureau customers.

SMA has three data centres with the primary location housed at The Bunker, an ex-Ministry of Defence facility built to house the nation’s critical infrastructure.  It is located outside of London, to minimise the risks posed by the threat of terrorist attacks and urban disaster.  The facility is ISO27001 accredited and reduces the risk of external interruption such as hacking or viruses that can compromise the availability of business critical applications.

Christian Antrobus, Chief Information Officer, SMA Financial said, “The SMA Bureau Service is a critical piece of infrastructure for our clients. That’s why we have chosen one of the country’s most secure locations for our data centre to support this.  We have increased the capacity and throughput for the bureau and The Bunker offers total peace of mind over the bureau’s security, service uptime and availability.  Every customer that we have taken to The Bunker has been impressed with the security and resilience of the facility.”

The Bunker ensures that the SMA Bureau Service operates and is maintained under the strictest possible security standards.  SMA has its own dedicated suite at The Bunker with physical access restricted to a list of approved personnel.  Uninterruptible power supplies and dedicated generators allied to multiple onsite ISPs, carriers and telcos provide consistent connectivity to SWIFT and other external networks.

Willoughby Chapman, UK Sales Manager, The Bunker Secure Hosting commented, “Any company looking for outsourced SWIFT connectivity has to ensure its chosen supplier can provide a bureau service that is backed up by a highly secure data centre. Working with SMA ensures we can leverage our experienced in offering ultra secure data centre services to the financial industry with unequalled security and redundancy.”

Antrobus concluded, “I have complete confidence that SMA is working with the best partner for secure data centre services.  I am very pleased with every aspect of The Bunker particularly the attention to detail around security of the personnel and the resilience of the systems that are housed there.  The Bunker allows us to concentrate on offering outsourced services to our clients, safe in the knowledge that we are operating to the highest standards of business and service continuity.”