August 28, 2014 - Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) has rolled out IBM's Active-Active mainframe technology to provide business continuity and disaster recovery for its global branches.

Active-Active has been deployed in the state-owned bank's Shanghai data centre, which supports branches in 40 countries around the world.

Big Blue claims that its technology provides "near-continuous" availability, helping to guarantee the real-time delivery of more than two terabytes of account data that moves daily at the bank.

Lin Xiaoxuan, CTO, ICBC, says: "IBM mainframes have consistently helped us keep our IT systems steady and safe and will continue to do so in the future."

The deal is a coup for IBM, coming after recent media reports that China's government had told the country's banks to remove the IT giant's technology over security concerns.

Forrester analyst Gene Cao told Reuters that while the Chinese government does want banks to cut their reliance on foreign technology, talk of a ban is overblown.