Case Study: PKO Bank Polski nearly doubles Alnova transaction-processing performance with Hitachi Vantara

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

PKO Bank Polski, Poland’s largest retail bank, faced increasingly degraded performance in its mainframe-based Alnova transaction environment where peak loads (nearly 2,000 transactions/sec) and end-of-day/month batches pushed existing storage to its limits. To meet strict latency goals (keeping storage-induced transaction delay below ~2.5 ms) the bank selected Hitachi Vantara, deploying Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) hardware and Hitachi Tuning Manager after a rigorous evaluation and testing process.

Hitachi Vantara implemented VSP systems (with synchronous replication) and Hitachi Tuning Manager, validated through empirical replay of production extreme-load scenarios. The result: processing performance nearly doubled, the longest batch runs fell from about 10 hours to 7–8 hours, storage-induced delays stayed below the target threshold, and administrators gained detailed, minute-level monitoring for planning and diagnostics — delivering measurable capacity, performance and operational improvements.

PKO Bank Polski

Maciej Księżycki

Senior Administrator, Mass Storage Team IT Infrastructure Department