IBM has collaborated with Indian Bank to accelerate its modernization path with flexible and secure compute infrastructure for deploying new front-end banking applications, while addressing the business growth of the Core Banking Solution workloads for the bank. 

Indian Bank is one of the leading public sector banks in India, serving over 100 million customers with 5798 branches spread across the country and abroad. As part of their Project PARADISE, Indian Bank wanted to consolidate their Front Branch Servers for better manageability and availability at both Data Centres and Disaster Recovery (DR) centers, while also running their CBS workloads on the latest generation of IBM Power servers. 

“As part of our capacity management initiative and to manage evolving application requirements, we wanted a cloud like functionality within our own data center. With benefits like better flexibility, lower costs and enhanced security, we are creating a value-oriented solution by setting up a proactive and service-oriented model for the bank,” said Deepak Sarda, Chief General Manager - IT and Partnership, Indian Bank. “We are thrilled to work with IBM to transform our core banking environment. With the proposed private cloud solution, we aim to achieve better agility, scalability and security to meet our growth requirements and adopt a consumption-based IT solution that is required in today’s dynamic, hyper competitive market. The gains through technology-based innovation will empower us to deliver exceptional customer experiences, while ensuring the highest level of data protection,” he added. 

Viswanath Ramaswamy, Vice President, Technology, IBM India & South Asia said, “Evolving customer needs demand a new operating model for banks driven by a nimbler digital environment. Those that embrace new technologies to modernize can gain a significant competitive edge, build market differentiation through innovation and prepare themselves for the new financial frontier. We are focused on helping clients introduce hybrid cloud and AI tools to their workflow, operate with greater efficiency and drive growth while minimizing risks. Supporting Indian Bank’s journey of transforming their digital capabilities is testament to the success of this focused effort.” 

To meet Indian Bank’s digital infrastructure needs, IBM proposed a hybrid cloud approach for all AIX workloads to boost agility and introduced a combination of Capex and Opex model for consumption of compute resources. Essentially, it provides Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and aims to deliver various capabilities such as additional compute and storage, build a private cloud using the available resources, create a single pool of processors across DC and DR and enable services equivalent to a pay-as-you-grow model.  

To simplify and improve the security for their private cloud, Indian Bank is using IBM PowerSC for all AIX endpoints to get better support for compliance audits. Additionally, Indian Bank has deployed IBM PowerVC for simplified virtualization management, cloud deployments, workload image management and dynamic resource optimization for IBM AIX Servers.  

Further, by deploying Power Enterprise Pools, the bank has been able to provide a single pool of compute resources across their DC and DR sites, thereby enabling more efficient utilization of available compute resources and decreasing the total cost of ownership for the bank. 

The new cloud environment provided by IBM incorporates features such as virtual machine replication for consistency, a self-service portal for streamlined provisioning, and advanced capabilities such as virtual image capture, deployment, and cataloging. By consolidating front-end branch servers, Indian Bank enhances manageability and availability at its data centers in Chennai and Mumbai, ensuring uninterrupted service for customers.