Launch of BP-Switch

BP-Switch is now officially launched; if you’ve missed our previous announcements BP-Switch is the latest addition to the Babylon Payments family providing realtime and batch transaction switching geared towards the payments industry in compliance with PCI:DSS. Continuing EFTlab’s tradition of high performance and highly flexible software the application has been developed in a mixture of languages, C++ for core performance, python for flexible application infrastructure management and JavaScript for the latest generation of front-ends. The architecture is service oriented; a typical installation would look as follows:

Currently included in BP-Switch are:

• Multi-Platform Framework Installation
• Event monitoring
• HTTP interface
• TCP n-byte header interface
• JSON message format
• PostgreSQL and Microsoft SQL Server support
• Build framework for SDK
• Application registry
• Pipeline manager
• Message routing
• Timeout handling
• Service management
• Auditing
• Security
• User and Role administration
• Web based system monitoring and administration

EFTlab are working with their partners to deliver functionality in the order required by each installation therefore on the immediate roadmap are:

• Message bus configuration
• Licensing
• Pipeline configuration
• SQLite tracing
• ISO8583:1987 support
• Transaction persistence
• Transaction query

Due for delivery in the June 2014. Thereafter the roadmap will flex to meet customer requirements so watch this space but is likely to include modules for scheduling, HSMs and batch processing. Due to the shared codebase between BP-Sim and BP-Switch, EFTlab anticipate bringing support for all the protocols supported by BP-Sim shortly thereafter.

BP-Switch is designed around a highly modular service oriented architecture; one of the things EFTlab are very proud of is the openness of the platform with the BP-Switch SDK. Using the SDK customers and partners can create their own extensions to BP-Switch reducing the reliance on any one provider and reducing any risk of creating bottlenecks for development resource within EFTlab. Our partners at SQID Payments in Australia and Polar Moment in the UK are being trained in the use of our SDK to be ready to provide you with any bespoke development your business requires.

EFTlab have used the maturity of BP-Sim to verify BP-Switch prior to release to market however EFTlab make extensive use of unit testing using CI testing using Jenkins, SoapUI gmock, gtest and YUI test to ensure the product is stable. BP-Switch is regression tested using the ISO8583:1987 interface supported by BP-Sim and has so far been clocked at 200TPS running on a virtual server with 2 CPUs and 2GB of RAM against PostgreSQL using 8 virtual terminals. This is in full PCI mode using the JavaScript monitoring interface to show in realtime the system performance.

Security-first attitude has been used to deliver BP-Switch and thus the first modules available have been around auditing and tracing the application in a PCI:DSS and PA:DSS compliant manner. It’s vital to your business and therefore EFTlab that cardholder information is kept safe but allowing your system to be easily supportable and therefore it comes in three modes:

• Fully PCI:DSS compliant (production usage)
• Mostly PCI:DSS compliant (staging usage)
• Not PCI:DSS compliant (testing usage)

This allows the application to make available different data for end users to manage the system without violating any of the rules associated with card payments (such as never recording PIN/CVV2 data) and every change that’s made to the system is recorded since all changes must be made through the front-end. EFTlab are working closely with their QSA to ensure a fully PA:DSS compliant product and we’ll keep you up to date with progress on achieving PA:DSS.

The web interface is the key to BP-Switch; built on Bootstrap technology the interface is available on most platforms including tablets (and to a more limited extent mobile) to enable your administration and support staff to quickly and easily gain access to the solution. The front end provides all the administration functions you’d expect plus the ability to create your own extensions to continue to administer any plug-ins created with the SDK. Eventually EFTlab aim to provide many plug-ins to support SNMP, Nagios, OpenView and any other support frameworks our customers need.

At present the application is stateless and therefore requires nothing in the way of synchronization for high availability installations however the plan is that once the transaction persistence is in place and required for processing, the “inter-server component” will act as a persistence service capable of returning transactions on other servers; alternatively a clustered approach to databases may be used depending on the clients need for performance. Key management will be handled in a similar approach; when a key change is performed it will be advertised on the bus as all messages are; this will be picked up by the “inter-server component” and all other servers will be notified of the change.

EFTlab provide support appropriate to your organisation with their partners. EFTlab operate a 24*7*365.25 support operation ensuring continuity of service to your business with appropriate escalation paths to project and development managers as the situation dictates. EFTlab’s partners can also provide support, normally in the project phase, however where third parties provide components an additional support agreement will be required with the supplied of the component. Please ask your customer relationship advisor for more details to work out the plan best suited to your needs.

EFTlab are looking to get the first installation BP-Switch live in the next three months and will keep you up to date with the progress using these monthly newsletters. If you would like to be one of the first-to-market with EFTlab’s BP-Switch please contact us at info@eftlab.co.uk, call us on +61 421 088 162 or Skype us on username dscole.