Case Study: PKO Bank Polski achieves nearly doubled Alnova performance with Hitachi Data Systems storage solutions

PKO Bank Polski Nearly Doubles Performance of Its Alnova Central Banking System With Hitachi Storage Solutions

PKO Bank Polski, Poland’s largest retail bank, needed to keep transaction processing fast and reliable on its Alnova central banking system as data volumes and peak loads grew. The bank was seeing storage controller bottlenecks during critical payment and reporting periods, risking slower service for customers and delays in statutory reporting. It chose Hitachi Data Systems and the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, with Hitachi Tuning Manager also included for monitoring.

Hitachi Data Systems implemented the VSP storage environment and worked with PKO Bank Polski through extensive pre-production testing to verify performance under realistic workloads, including synchronous replication. The results were strong: transaction processing performance nearly doubled, data recording delays stayed below the bank’s 2.5-millisecond threshold, and the longest batch processing time improved from about 10 hours to 7–8 hours. Hitachi Tuning Manager also gave the bank detailed automated performance analysis, helping with planning and problem diagnosis.

PKO Bank Polski

Michal Bialoskorski

Senior Administrator, Mass Storage Team, IT Infrastructure Department, PKO Bank Polski