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" The Vordel API Server offers Cetrel the greatest deployment flexibility as it is available in multiple form factors Vmware appliance, software and hardware appliance " Jean-Luc Renier, Enterprise Architect, Cetrel Industry: Financial Services Deployment Country: Luxembourg Solution: Vordel API Server deployed to control and protect the delivery of API-based credit card payment and management services to Cetrel's banking and merchant customers throughout Europe.

Introduction:
Cetrel S.A. is a leading pan- European based card payment services provider offering services to lending and credit card providers. Originally established by major Luxembourgish retail banks, Cetrel manages electronic payment operations for VISA and Mastercard in Luxembourg. Cetrel is also a third party processor for foreign leading credit lending institutions.

Business Challenges:
In response to the growing and varied proliferation of B2B and B2C card-based product service offerings made by financial services institutions, Cetrel needed to be able to respond quickly and flexibly to the needs of its customers. The market opportunity is such that Cetrel set itself a business target of trebling the quantity of cards under its management within 3 to 5 years timeframe. Consequently, Cetrel could not afford to create any impediment for existing customers' adopting these new services or present obstacles to the on-boarding of new customers to its services. Furthermore, Cetrel had to ensure a continued level of customer service would be maintained with respect to security, 24/7 service response times and legislative compliance.

Technical Challenges:
Cetrel adopted a Services Oriented Architecture approach to align its IT infrastructure with the business objectives of increased flexibility and responsiveness. In addition to the migration of legacy applications to a SOA and API-based integration environment, the architecture and development teams had to ensure all security, monitoring and performance policies were implemented.

• Cetrel had to create over 600 different APIs to meet the many and varied needs of its individual customers.
• Fine-grained and customized security controls (such as crypto settings for confidentiality and integrity) specific to each API and customer needed to be replicated and enforced.
• The new solution needed to be deployed without disrupting the continued delivery of the service and be able to go live into production within 4 weeks of delivery.
• Cetrel required a solution offering a broad range of security policy support; ranging from existing legacy standards to the very latest versions of WS-Security policy.
• The solution also had to be compliant with Mastercard and VISA rules and regulations (especially PCI-DSS) and be capable of integrating all relevant compliance amendments.
• Reduce as much as possible the configuration changes required to the new backend system, keeping in mind that the rollout of customers will be completed over several months.
• Finally, Cetrel required a solution offering very stable performance levels. Cetrel needs to be able to respond quickly at all times to any service outage. They sought a solution to monitor the API traffic and that could report into their HP monitoring solution.

Benefits/Results:
With Vordel, Cetrel addresses all its technical concerns and is successfully delivering on its overall stated business objectives. Benefits derived from the Vordel API Server include:

• An improvement in the overall performance and efficiency of the SOA infrastructure. The Vordel API Server is dedicated to the tasks of accelerating the processing of XML and other data formats and security protocols whilst the application server infrastructure is focused on processing business logic.
• Easier and faster on-boarding of new customers via the flexibility of the security standards supported by the Vordel API Server and versatility of applying different dedicated per user policies for the very same API.
• Improved operational efficiencies via the segregation of team duties; the application support team can focus on the business logic coding whilst the infrastructure support team can focus on security and monitoring.
• Cetrel reduces the risk of security weaknesses via in-house development; now the developers can focus on business and functionality integration.