Moving data from one location to another can be a stressful task. Much like transporting jewels in a bank heist film, data in transit can expose it to a number of risks including data loss.

Today we’ve seen some astounding news from Direct Transact. The firm provides cloud-based transaction infrastructure to banks, retailers and other businesses.

Recently, Direct Transact made the move to Teraco and that meant moving 100 terabytes of data. Considering that many of Direct Transact’s customer are banks and as much as R40 billion in transactions flows through its infrastructure, there could be no downtime or disruptions.

To add even more complexity to the move, Direct Transact opted to move all 100TB of data in one go.

“Our team members overcame all kinds of adversity to make this happen. We really have exceptionally skilled and dedicated people making sure that our clients and the broader financial system always remain safe and stable,” said head of business support services at Direct Transact, Dirk Labuschagne.

In total, the data of 15 customers was moved to Teraco’s infrastructure. These customers comprise 10 small to medium sized banks and “five other major financial institutions”. The firm’s client list includes Absa, Old Mutual, Bidvest Bank and Standard Chartered among many others.

In order to execute this frankly astounding feat, Direct Transact prepared for literal years. The move was the final phase in a project that has been in development for three years. One of most important aspects of the move was maintaining a 99.99 percent uptime for clients and Direct Transact did it.

Teraco has welcomed the firm to its ranks.

“By deploying critical infrastructure in Teraco, Direct Transact and its partners now have direct access to a financial ecosystem comprising more than 250 network and connectivity providers, all the local and global cloud onramps, and over 80 financial services providers. As the recognised African leader in data centre infrastructure, Teraco provides world class infrastructure facilities as well as access to a business enablement platform assisting enterprises in their digital migration strategies,” said head of enterprise at Teraco, Ryan Proksch.

Since its launch in 2002, when Direct Transact became the first independent Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider to the financial services industries in South Africa it has built a reputation as a trusted banking solutions provider.

This move is absolutely impressive and we tip our cap to the team at Direct Transact that made it happen.