Data Centers
Our Data Centres are like vaults that house the computer equipment used to process all our operations and, most importantly, our customers’ data. In addition, one of their main missions is to guarantee the availability of our services in any and all circumstances.
The first and pioneering of the five Data Processing Centers (DPDs) built was the one in Boadilla del Monte (Madrid, Spain) in 2004, and the Data Centre as a Service (DCaaS) team is responsible for its operation and maintenance. Later, in 2011, the Cantabria (Spain) DPC was built, which laid the foundations for how the rest of the Group's DPCs have been constructed.
The other DPCs subsequently established by Santander are located in: Querétaro (Mexico), Carlton Park (Leicester, United Kingdom), and Sao Paulo (Brazil). All of them apply the best practices in the sector, helping to contribute to the Santander Group’s goal of achieving zero carbon emissions by 2050.
The buildings are designed to contribute to environmental protection and the fight against climate change. To this end, circular economy processes have been implemented to give a second life to equipment and solar plants have been installed to promote the use of renewable energies and allow us to be self-sufficient.
Fusion Center
The Fusion Centre pools all our global skills in the area of service quality and cybersecurity. All activity on digital channels is monitored 24/7, 365 days a year, allowing us to anticipate problems and resolve them before our customers even realise they have occurred.
To give an idea, every month we monitor more than 50 billion online transactions by our Group. In Europe we have executed more than 24 million batch actions in 14 countries and managed 70,000 alerts and 4,000 system changes. We also maintain a permanent connection to North and South America. We are a global banking security and surveillance network!
The ORA operating model: O-bserve, R-esolve and A-nalyse. Everything we analyse with this tool generates knowledge that is fed back to generate a continuous improvement model.
Our IT Operations and Cybersecurity teams are the ‘rock stars’ of the centre. These L1 engineers are experts in databases, transactional systems, communications and much, much more. They work 24/7 to resolve any incidents, changes or problems that may arise. Together with our Cybersecurity teams (Protect, Defend and Respond), nothing escapes our attention. We resolve everything with real-time metrics.
And now here comes the most exciting part! We have developed our own global observability platform: ALMA, a combination of advanced technology with a touch of magic. ALMA allows us to reduce irritating alarms and let AI take care of 35% of alerts without human intervention. It’s like having Iron Man on our team! In addition, ALMA automatically assigns the appropriate technical teams, performs escalations and opens virtual rooms to solve problems quickly. And it all happens at the speed of light!
We are constantly evolving to offer an even better service to our customers. We have clear efficiency targets and we are implementing a follow-the-sun operating model between our centres in Spain, Mexico and Brazil.
Use case: Gravity
