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Loans2Go was using bespoke systems running on old IBM mainframes designed by a related company based in the US. The DBAs supporting the systems were part of this company. Over time the systems were migrated over to MSSQL but still supported by the US until new stricter rules under GDPR were announced. It was agreed that DBA support should move to the UK to mitigate any compliance issues.
The company runs a small IT & development team, and whilst it was clear that it needed a skilled resource to maintain and optimise the database environment, the cost of hiring a dedicated team of DBAs was prohibitive. The environment also needed urgent optimisation as the company was missing out on business opportunities due to the time-sensitive nature of the online acquisition process. If the system could respond quicker to the circa 40,000 daily applications, this would increase the volume of acquisitions.
Node4 was also instrumental in helping Loans2Go overhaul and migrate its environment. This included solution design and testing. One of the key points that emerged from this was the identification of a sever bottleneck on the new infrastructure, which, had it gone unnoticed would have had severe consequences for the business.
“What has stood out about Node4 the most is that we were looking for a company that gave more of a personal touch,” said James Godbold, CIO at Loans2Go. “While other companies may have just stuck some monitoring on servers and automated high-level alerts, with Node4, they will proactively investigate issues and raise up personally. As a lean IT team, it’s great being able to bounce ideas off other skilled professionals and have them feel like an extension of our team because they truly care.”
Another benefit of working with Node4 is that Loans2Go can reap flexibility. “Larger suppliers mean work becomes siloed. With Node4, we get flexibility and great communication,” James explained. “Our data centre migration has been bumped three or four times due to priorities shifting and the infrastructure issues, and Node4 has been very accommodating with that. The team understands the complications with projects, and have gone above and beyond what they are actually committed to do to help us reach a shared goal.”
James continues: “The way we onboard customers is through an auction panel and response time is critical to this. Without quick responses, we lose custom. It is that simple. The old environment was seeing performance degradation, and because of this, we were not responding to the bids within the 30-second time frame. The speed of our infrastructure is vital; otherwise, we miss out on huge amounts of opportunity. We are now completing the process in sub 5 seconds, whereas before we had huge fluctuations between 10 and 40 seconds. With Node4 testing the new environment and finding the flaws, we’ve also averted moving to kit that wouldn't have been able to respond quick enough either.”
Loans2Go is now looking to build out new DR sites and expand into cloud solutions with the help of Node4’s data management and infrastructure expertise.
