From its humble
beginnings as a shoe store established by founder Henry
Sy Snr in 1958, Philippines’ Shoemart Corporation (SM)
has grown to encompass the largest retail chain
departmental stores in the country, accounting for more
than 65% of the Philippine retail market. In 2006, SM
opened the largest department store in Asia - SM Mall of
Asia.
SM called on GHL Systems
to provide an updated payment infrastructure - one that
is robust, highly available, scalable and adaptable to
their specific requirements. GHL Systems deployed a
payment network based on the NetAccess W1000 series of
Network Access Controllers (NACs) that could cater for
redundant links, high-availability load balanced
controllers and links to their various acquiring banks.”
The solution called for
two data centres that were geographically distant. SM
had two data centres located in Roxas and Makati which
are about 15 km apart. These data centres became the
central communications hubs. The data centres are linked
redundantly by two high-speed leased lines - provided by
two separate telecommunications providers. In each of
the data centres are five NetAccess W1000 NACs to handle
the routing of transactions to the banks. The system is
configured to share the load evenly between the two data
centres. In addition to being load balanced, the system
is also highly redundant with links to their banks
duplicated on each site. In the event that one of the
data centres is incapacitated, the SM payment
infrastructure will be able to handle the full load of
the entire organization.
With the NetAccess W1000
the expanded and enhanced system was able to cater for
acceptance of 13 different types of cards. The system
handles credit and debit payments, loyalty point
collection, even the in-house SM Gift Cards with prepaid
value of Ps500. Today, the system handles over 30 types
of transactions with the option to add more over time.
System scalability is achieved by merely adding more
W1000 units to cater for the additional loads.
The system is constantly
monitored constantly using the NetAccess System Monitor
- a tool for monitoring the general health and loads on
each server in a graphical user interface. The GUI is
simple and color-coded, showing at one glance the state
of the entire network.
Considering the scope
and the functionality of the system, the project took a
mere three weeks from design to configuration and
implementation. The project was greatly aided by the
fact that the leased lines were quickly available for
implementation.
Supports PSTN and
wireless/GSM-based EDC terminals
Native Switching NAC
Native
support for Ethernet TCP/IP
Acts as firewall in
TCP/IP networks, and as a TCP/IP connection
concentrator (over 400 TCP/IP client sessions
supported)
Clustering capability for high
availability & fault tolerant failover
Customizable
for special or customized protocols
Supports the
IPSEC protocol, which implements highly secure
communication links between NetAccess nodes and also
provides secure encrypted channels over a shared and
un-trusted TCP/IP network
Fast roll-out and
implementation
The success of the
project was immediately confirmed during the Christmas
season of 2005. GHL Systems’ consultants and engineers
were on standby in Manila during the festive season.
However, the systems and network performed smoothly and
without a glitch – and continues to do so until today.
References in this publication to GHL Systems Berhad’s products or services do not imply that GHL Systems Berhad intends to make them available in all countries in which GHL Systems Berhad operates.
This document is based on information provided by ShoeMart and illustrates how one organization uses GHL Systems Berhad products. Many factors have contributed to the results and benefits described; GHL Systems Berhad does not guarantee comparable results elsewhere.
