Satellite reference architecture use cases
Use cases for the Satellite reference architecture for the IBM Cloud for Financial Services typically fall into the four categories in the following table.
| Use Case | Description |
|---|---|
| Platform modernization | Innovate faster and free your team to develop applications with Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud on-premises. Establish container portability and PaaS foundation for developer services and digital supply chain operations. Achieve improved cybersecurity with industry-leading Keep Your Own Key encryption. |
| Concentration risk | Mitigate regulatory concerns about concentration risk by using a hybrid cloud deployment model that uses Satellite to extend secure Financial Services Validated offerings from IBM Cloud to your data center. |
| Data residency | Manage local data requirements — storage (residency) and legal protections (sovereignty) — by keeping data in-country and accessing public cloud services. Improve data privacy (cybersecurity) for regulated data with industry-leading Keep Your Own Key encryption. |
| AI and automation | Gain new insights and process automation by enhancing databases on-premises with IBM Cloud Pak AI and automation services that are deployed with Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud. Maintain control of data on-premises for performance, sovereignty, and regulatory requirements. |
Two uses cases from real financial institutions are presented in the following sections.
US regional bank
During a time-sensitive merger, a US regional bank needed to integrate two entities’ IT operations securely and bring consistency across container platforms in on-premises branch locations without adding overhead. Satellite enabled the customer to establish a location that used its existing data center infrastructure and create multiple Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud clusters so that teams could build and host containerized workloads in a consistent way and pay only for what they consumed. This scenario is an example of using Satellite for platform modernization.
The following diagram shows a high-level overview of the architecture that is used by this financial institution.
Key features of their approach include:
- Using VMWare or other virtualization infrastructure to provide the hosts in the Satellite location.
- Leveraging a proxy that they manage for traffic to and from the Satellite location.
- Running Satellite-enabled Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud for their workloads and exploring other Satellite-enabled services in later phases when they become Financial Services Validated.
- Hosting on-premises databases on virtual machines outside the Satellite location within the enterprise.
- Placing management tools in virtual servers within their IBM Cloud account.
- Using the following services on IBM Cloud:
- IAM for identity and access management
- Activity Tracker Event Routing to collect IBM Cloud audit events
- Object Storage for backup and archiving data
Multinational bank
A multinational bank wanted to ensure they were following local requirements for data residency by keeping data in country when they were accessing public cloud services. The Satellite reference architecture was a perfect fit for them.
The following diagram shows a high-level overview of the architecture that is used by this second institution.
Highlights of their architecture include the following:
- Using on-premises virtual infrastructure for the Satellite location
- Using a proxy that they manage for traffic to and from the Satellite location
- Running Satellite-enabled Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud for their workloads
- Integrating with various on-premises solutions (outside of the Satellite location) for logging, monitoring, image registry, and DevOps
- Using the following services on IBM Cloud:
- IAM for identity and access management, federated with an external identity provider (Active Directory Federation Services)
- Object Storage for Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud control plane backups
- Red Hat NTP to sync the time on all nodes