Banking on a WAN

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: In its endeavour to bring in smooth business functioning and effective service delivery, Mahesh Sahakari Bank, an urban cooperative bank, was in need of a network infrastructure that was available, scalable and reliable. Established in 1972, the bank was witnessing robust growth. It conducted its operations from nine branches in Pune and one in Mumbai.

To withstand the increase in its growth, the bank required an architecture that would connect its distributed branches and support the central banking application. The basic objectives set forth for the exercise were implementation and execution of a wide area network (WAN) switching infrastructure for branches, availability to its end users, intelligent enough to support the existing applications and flexibility in the infrastructure to accommodate new services.

The first challenge that the bank faced was to network its branches with a WAN that allowed it to extend its reach. To address this concern, they needed a network infrastructure that leveraged the technological advancements, supported the existing distributed banking applications and reduced operating costs. The deployment of a WAN allowed the bank to move towards a centralised mode.

Pramod Kulkarni, managing director, Mahesh Sahakari Bank, asserts, “The migration to a core banking system paved the way for a better management information system. This resulted in the streamlining of many processes for the bank. It guaranteed the dual benefits of centralised data and core banking.”

Centralised data enabled the bank to gain easy access to information. Also, the end result was seamless connectivity between the bank’s head office, its branches and its users. It also presented the bank with the opportunity to offer new services, namely mobile and internet banking.

In addition to this, the bank also leveraged the audit services that resulted in a conclusive analysis, thereby helping the bank customise its offerings. An example of this would be the results of the analysis based on the transactions that facilitated the bank’s understanding of investment schemes favoured by its customers. This initiative enabled the bank to customise and formulate a suitable investment scheme. The automated reports provided by the management information system ensured that the bank was in a position to generate error-free documents to be submitted to regulatory bodies.

The objective behind the implementation was to put in place an infrastructure that would support the bank’s existing application platforms and at the same time be sufficiently flexible to accommodate the roll out of new services.

At this juncture, it identified Netsol, an IBM company, for its partner. IBM Netsol had already established itself as an expert in setting up networking infrastructure and it specialised in converged WAN solutions. Netsol collaborated with the bank’s internal IT team to kick-start the project, starting off with a testing phase that ensured smooth connectivity. The implementation was still in the testing phase and the bank had not got around to calculating the return on investment from the project. However, it had already managed to save 50% on costs, thanks to the upgrade.

The implementation of a WAN assisted the bank in improving time-to-market. In addition to tapping different delivery channels, the bank benefited in the sense that the defined functionality of each layer enabled it to seamlessly add branches anywhere. The defined hierarchical IP addressing made room for sufficient subnets that were reserved for future expansion. In addition, features like remote network configuration enabled the network administrator to configure network components from a central location. Also, manageability of the network that included management of equipment, fault, and the like had become easier.

The modular nature of the network ensured upgradation, re-configuration, and modifications, if any, in a phased manner.

The deployment of WAN ensured the availability of relevant information to the bank’s stakeholders. Leased lines, secondary ISDN connections, as well as dial up connections were established as part of the contingency plan. Also, connectivity to the disaster recovery site housed at a different location was laid down.

IBM Netsol automated the migration path to redundant connections. Hence, in case of a failure in a leased line, connectivity would automatically be shunted to the secondary ISDN link and from there to the dialup link. The bank took the step of providing training to its staff on operating the network infrastructure, allowing them to hone their IT skills in-house.

Kulkarni says, “Our insistence on availability resulted in primary and secondary media at the access level. This ensured availability of the network during failure of the primary link.” According to Kulkarni, the products have high mean time between failure rates and low mean time to repair. Furthermore, the two routers at the core have redundant power supplies that automatically took over in the event of the failure of a router’s primary power supply.