Case study

Scalable data engine underpins

Ekogenio anti-fraud platform
HP Vertica provides the scalability and responsiveness to
bolster the launch of Iknoplex financial services software
Industry
Software services
Objective
Find a data analytics platform capable of processing
real-time reporting on banking sector, and scale to
match growth expectations
Approach
Met with HP, a long-term partner, and its Vertica
development team. Conducted testing before
committing to HP Vertica Community Edition,
and then upgrading to the Enterprise Edition
IT matters
Provides real-time access to reports, enabling fast
response to fraudulent transactions
Enables the tracing of high-risk requests to protect
customer information
Handles unstructured data from multiple sources,
simplifying usage
Business matters
Initial adoption of HP Vertica Community
Edition reduces start-up costs, while upgrade to
Enterprise Edition enables the company to meet
business growth
Compresses data efficiently, enabling at least
three years records to be stored to meet financial
industry regulations, such as Basel II

HP Vertica enables us to handle a huge amount of data

without the need for huge servers or high-powered PCs.
Weve avoided large upfront costs with being able to
progress from Community to Enterprise Editions, which
will help us establish our product in the market.
Franco Rasello, founder and CEO, Ekogenio

Data analytics engine powers financial services platform

Ekogenio is a software start-up creating applications for the
financial sector. Its latest product is Iknoplex Online Fraud
Manager, a managed platform that traces, detects and
prevents online fraud. For this platform, Ekogenio needed a
data analytics engine capable of processing huge amounts of
data quickly and consistently. HP Vertica provides the scale and
performance to ensure a successful launch.

Case study | Ekogenio

Challenge

Solution

Software solutions for a highly

regulated market
Ekogenio is a software start-up creating
applications for the financial sector. It is part
of the Italian Integrare Group, but taking
advantage of more favorable German business
conditions for start-ups, is currently based out
of Berlin.

Scalable, responsive, secure

The Integrare parent group had worked
with HP hardware for a number of years.
Franco Rasello, founder and CEO, says it was
a natural step to have a conversation with
HP Vertica. HP has a strong presence in Italy.
We looked at the HP Vertica features, spoke
to their development team, and considered
it to be our best option. I was happy that any
problems wed face could be solved with
HP Vertica.

The company specializes in anti-fraud

applications. These help financial institutions
meet regulations, notably the Basel II guidance
on capital levels and risk management. In
addition, Italian banks are required to maintain
a log of physical and electronic transactions
and make them available for inspection for two
years. This equates to a highly complex, highly
regulated environment, with an emphasis
on immediate access to accurate data.
One of Ekogenios largest customers is the
clearing house for 50-plus Italian regional
banks. Each day it clears millions of banking
and credit card transactions, generating more
than one TB of data. Ekogenios latest product
is its Iknoplex Online Fraud Manager platform.
To help the platform to trace, detect and
prevent online fraud, Ekogenio needed
a data analytics engine capable of processing
huge amounts of data quickly and consistently.
As a start-up, it wanted a solution with
minimum upfront costs, but with the
ability to scale and keep pace with new
business opportunities.

HP Vertica is able to retain all of Iknoplexs

data for three years (though this can be
extended to 10 years). This is possible because
of the HP Vertica efficient compression
features, which enable it to compress data
by a factor of at least four, and by up to a
factor of 80 depending on the data type
where competitor databases can typically
only achieve a compression factor of two.
HP Vertica provides detailed control over
where data is stored, with options to tier data
between different storage devices, and to
archive online data to offline storage.
The Iknoplex platform checks events by
priority: critical (every 10 minutes), high (every
20), medium (every hour), and low (once a day).
The platform can produce reports on the fly
in response to customer requests, due to two
features of HP Vertica: its fast response, and
its ability to analyze data without needing to
re-aggregate it. For Iknoplex, HP Vertica is able
to manage terabyte sized data with response
times of just a few seconds.
Alerts and reports on all online data can be
requested and delivered within seconds.
Ekogenio is then able to schedule reports
to fit different customers and regulatory
requirements. In terms of security, HP Vertica
enables the Iknoplex platform to trace high-risk
requests and detect online fraud in real-time.

Case study | Ekogenio

Customer solution
at a glance
Hardware
Choice of HP hardware at customer site
depending on each customer
Software
HP Vertica Enterprise Edition

Rasello says his team was able to test

HP Vertica before committing to buy, and that
the Community Edition (using less than
one-half TB of data) was sufficient while
building its customer base before upgrading
to the full Enterprise solution.
The Iknoplex platform is deployed at a
customers premises, and can run on low-cost
commodity servers using standard industry
interfaces, with processing capability scaling
linearly with cluster size.

Benefits
Technical superiority and commercial
partnership
Ekogenio was able to develop and deploy
the Iknoplex platform quickly due to
the HP Verticas standard SQL interface.
HP Vertica provides a highly available and
resilient basis for Iknoplex, and is able to
handle unstructured data on customers online
activity from multiple sources which saves
time and simplifies usage.
HP Vertica enables us to handle a huge
amount of data without the need for huge
servers or high-powered PCs, says Rasello.
Weve avoided large upfront costs with
being able to progress from Community to
Enterprise Editions, which will help us establish
our product in the market.

For Ekogenios Italian banking customer,

the Iknoplex platform now handles more
than 170,000 transactions per working day.
By being able to process data in real-time,
HP Vertica means that Iknoplex can detect
fraudulent transactions quickly and accurately.
This is essential to provide the fast action
needed by the banks to respond to fraud
the longer a rogue transaction is left
undetected, the larger the potential risk,
so the HP Verticas speed directly helps the
banks reduce their financial losses.
Rasello says the benefits extend beyond
HP Vertica meeting technical issues.
The broader impact, and the one that may
secure Ekogenios long term fortunes,
is being brought under HPs marketing wing.
As a start-up, it has been of tremendous
benefit to go to market with the solution
underpinned by the HP name, says Rasello.
It gives us immediate credibility and assures
our customers that this platform is supported
by a data engine that will continue to develop
and improve.
Furthermore, through the HP partner program,
Ekogenio is granted certified technical
status, invited to industry events featuring
HP customers and given access to product
development heads. Were in contact with the
developers, feeding back our thoughts on the
product and how it is working, says Rasello.
Were already seeing our feedback being
worked on.
Rasello says Ekogenio plans to expand beyond
the Italian market, and says HP introductions
will be of benefit. Were also working on
solutions for the energy sector, another
area where HP has useful connections.
It is in HPs interest for us to grow. It is a
true partnership.

Learn more at
hp.com/go/vertica

Case study | Ekogenio

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Copyright 2014 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only
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4AA5-1170ENW, February 2014