IT software to protect Ghana’s customs clearance system

The Ghana Customs Secure Document Management System (GCSDMS) project, initiated by the Ministry of Finance and Revenue Agencies Governing Board (now the Ghana Revenue Authority) and implemented by BankSwitch Ghana Ltd, is a fully automated electronic solution for the processing and valuation of goods imported into the country and allows for the full monitoring of all aspects of customs operations.

Given the sensitive nature of this implementation, BankSwitch Ghana Ltd had to put in place a robust business continuity platform to protect the availability of the system’s core applications and data. Double-Take Availability is being used to protect these critical applications, which include Microsoft SQL Server 2005 database clusters and clustered Web application services. About 100 users are connected to the main server protected by Double-Take Availability.

Francis Darlington Kwashie, Head of Operations & Technology at BankSwitch Ghana Ltd. commented, “We wanted to ensure we implemented a seamless disaster recovery plan with real-time data protection, high availability and recovery. We chose Double-Take Software because its solutions were easy to deploy and for the wide range of platforms that were supported, rendering them particularly efficient. During failover situations, almost zero administrative effort is required to keep systems and users online and server replication time is negligible.”

Double-Take Software’s solutions have enabled BankSwitch Ghana Ltd. to protect all of its critical workloads against the risk of downtime, replicating all data from the company’s primary data centres in Ghana across to a secondary site in Dubai over a secure Wide Area Network.

“Organisations are becoming increasingly aware of the catastrophic consequences that downtime can have on their business,” says Wouter Vancoppenolle, Regional Sales Director Eastern Europe, Middle East & Africa, at Double-Take Software. “Organisations realise they must invest in business continuity and backup solutions as a way to make sure their data and applications remain protected, as well as providing more value back to the business. We have a vast amount of experience in helping companies to migrate, protect and recover their business systems and data, and making sure that they have best practices in place around their business continuity strategy.”