ESDS’s Disaster Recovery offering comes to DNDCCB’s rescue

Circular from RBI mandated all co-operative banks to implement CBS that would assist in providing round the clock processing for all the products, services, and information of a bank. DNDCCB opted for Datacenter setup in their own premises and ESDS was selected as end-to-end solution provider for setting up the Datacenter, redundant network connectivity to all branches and Disaster Recovery at ESDS Datacenter on Cloud Hosting model.

Incident

On Sunday, April 17, 2016, the officials at Dhule & Nandurbar District Central Co-operative Bank Limited were thrown into turmoil when they saw fumes coming out of the windows of their Head office. The fire started at around 8:30 am on the third and fourth floor of the bank where the corporate offices were located. DNDCCB’s on-site DC located in the same place hosted all the critical data and client information along with all the transactions and banking operation information. Losing this data could have resulted in some serious consequences. The fire was so intense that it took around 70 fire brigades and 5 hours to get the situation under control. The Bank lost all of its IT assets and important documents in the accident but thankfully the DC was on the second floor so it was unharmed. While there was no harm to the Servers and Storages in the DC, but the outdoor units of PAC’s and Electrical Systems had got damaged, so the DC became completely inaccessible. 

Since the Business Continuity Plan was already in place by ESDS, all the data was safe and business operations could be resumed without any loss of data.

Execution Framework

ESDS’s dedicated monitoring team caught site of the scenario and immediately instructed the bank officials to shut down the DC operations on priority & have it sealed.

DC Security team contacts BCP Committee for DR Approval:

The incident took place around 8:30 am and the data was backed up at DR Site (ESDS Datacenter) till 8:28 am. As soon as the Security team informed ESDS about the Scenario, the 24/7 support team contacted DNDCCB BCP Committee. After investigating the complete situation of the fire disaster at DNDCCB, it was concluded that the bank head office has taken a major toll due to the catastrophe and it can take weeks, if not months for the bank to completely resume its standard operations. In the meantime, ESDS’s “Service Delivery” team took charge of the situation and made sure that DNDCCB DC infrastructure is secured by taking preventive measures on-site and took consent of the BCP committee to initiate DR process.

After DNDCCB’s BCP Committees consent, ESDS was able to immediately initiate the DR switch over within 2 hours of the disaster. Dhule BCP team was then updated about the DR activation and requested to verify data integrity and application accessibility at their end.

Service Delivery

After successful switchover to DR site at ESDS, the Service delivery team took a follow up for another 4 hours and made sure that all 90 branches of DNDCCB are connected to the DR site and the operations are running smoothly at all branches. “Complete Disaster Recovery” was achieved with near zero data loss.

Operations Recovered from DR Site:
 
The Dhule & Nandurbar DCCB was successful in transitioning all of its 90 branches to the DR site and was able to make sure the banks operations don’t get hampered. To the outside world, the bank was open for business as usual. The Bank has been able to curve paths towards achieving business benefits by offering state-of-the-art services to customers through their branches across Dhule & Nandurbar districts with no hindrances in its work processes.

Best DR practices every organization needs to consider before implementing a DR solution:
It is very important that the DR location ought to be no less than 150 km’s from the DC site and not so far that it hampers the required RPO & RTO. The required RPO can be determined by calculating the cost of downtime for the business and weighing it against the respective investments in DR infrastructure. It should be noted that while there are tangible costs that results from business interruption, there are also intangible costs that would surface in the form of lost opportunities for new business to the competitors, loss of reputation etc.

Importance of DR Drills:
 
DR Drills plays a vital role in the whole process but its importance is often ignored by many organizations. ESDS makes sure to perform at least two DR drills every year with DNDCCB team in order to test all the applications, creating solutions for ways to access the critical applications and programs in the event of a disaster. This is done in order to rectify any discrepancies found during the drill thereby eliminating them during the actual Disaster. This is one of the most crucial parts of the disaster recovery plan for any organization. In the event of disaster, where the operations from HO as in the case of DNCCB are down, RBI has very strict policies to adhere in CBS, as it can result in the voiding of SLA’s and cancellations of Licenses.

In this article, we have sketched out DNDCCB’s present business continuity arrangements, in terms of various requests from the financial institutes. It ought to likewise be noticed that, in spite of the fact that the Bank’s DR plan incorporate arrangements to address extremely severe conditions resulting due to a disaster, it is not necessary that all the financial institutions be prepared for such conditions in the same manner.

Significance of DR
 
The 17th April Fire Incident at DNDCCB head office have demonstrated the significance of business continuity planning/Disaster Recovery addressing wide-range interruptions and prompted numerous financial institutes to audit and fortify their own DR arrangements. To empower and help these moves by financial institutions, and along these lines guarantee the viable functioning of payment and settlement systems, security & stability of the financial market in India even in times of disasters.

“Disaster Recovery isn’t a one size fits all methodology. Every business is distinctive and every application, a group of clients and organization will have distinct necessities. Our real-time auto scaling Cloud platform is a perfect fit for all types of Organizations and all such DR setups are managed and monitored 24×7” says Piyush Somani, MD & CEO, ESDS Software Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

Disaster recovery and business Continuity planning are basic parts of the overall risk management for an organization. Since the majority of the threats can’t be dispensed, organizations are executing disaster recovery and business continuity plan to get ready for possibly unexpected disasters. Both procedures are similarly critical on the grounds that they give detail strategies on how the business will proceed after extreme interferences and catastrophes.

In the case of a disaster, the proceedings with operations of your organization rely upon the capacity to replicate your IT frameworks and information. The disaster recovery arrangement stipulates how an organization will plan for a disaster, how the organization will respond, and what steps it will take to guarantee that operations can be reestablished. Disaster recovery depicts the greater part of the strides required in making arrangements for and adjusting to a potential disaster with a guide that will reestablish operations while minimizing the long haul negative effect on the organization.

On the other hand, Business continuity plan recommends a more thorough way of ensuring your business is operational, after a characteristic calamity, as well as in the case of littler disruptions. Business continuity includes keeping all parts of a business functioning as opposed to simply technology systems. DR arrangement is a genuinely new approach that teaches what steps an organization must take to minimize the impacts of administration interference. This will restrict the transient negative effect on the organization.

Key Takeaways:

• DNDCCB was able to tackle a crucial disaster situation which could have hampered the entire operation of the bank.

• 100% uptime for Data Center, DR, and 99.95% connectivity uptime achieved for all branches

• The entire set-up deployed for DR is capable of recovering in case of disasters at a primary location within an hour (RTO = 1 hour).

• Secure Connectivity solution from 90 branches to the DC

• Prior DR Drills Assured Smooth & Secured move to the DR Site after the incident.

• Disaster Recovery monitoring with eMagic DCIM tool made it easy to address the calamity the

moment it happened and take appropriate actions.

• Short RPO helped in zero transaction loss.

• Bank was able to continue regular operations within an hour after the incidence.
The objective behind this article is to enlighten all the banks & financial institutions with the importance of DR/Business continuity plans. It is very important to have the right approach, well-defined DR plans and an experienced technology partner in place. DNDCCB was smart enough to do so, are you?

DNDCCB
Mr. Dhiraj Chaudhary
CEO, DNDCCB

Data Sensitivity is an integral part of any organization and DNDCCB being a co-operative bank had all their critical data hosted at Dhule Data Center. DNDCCB had a forecast and vision for the requirement of a DR solution. DNDCCB with the help of ESDS pro-actively Implemented DR Solution around 2 years back. DR site was up and fully functional with regular DR Drills & Testing performed by ESDS at least twice a year. DNDCCB was never prepared for any Disaster, but the mandate from RBI to have a fully functional Disaster Recovery site is what saved us from a major Fire hazard that completely destroyed our Head office and the Data Center at Dhule also got badly affected. The bank highly appreciates ESDS support with the successful & efficient transition of its 90 branches to the DR site and made sure the banks operations doesn’t get hampered due to the Fire scenario happened at its head office. The Bank has been able to curve paths towards achieving business benefits by offering state-of-the-art services to customers through their 40+ branches across Dhule and Nandurbar districts with no hindrances in its work processes. The bank was fully functional from the very next day without any data or transaction loss. Network service was scaled to other 50 branches within few days and all 90 branches started running from the Disaster Recovery Cloud hosting solution provided by ESDS. All our branches continue to function from the DR solution of ESDS from last 2 months.

Mr. Rajvardhan Kadambande
Hon. Chairman, DNDCCB

After the Fire incidence, ESDS’s DR Rescue team was available at the incident site within 2 hrs. The support team after analyzing the complete scenario and understanding the criticality of the situation worked 24/7 on the DR Activation process ensuring all the branches were fully operational the very next day of the incidence. I would like to extend my gratitude on behalf of the bank. We are really thankful for ESDS’s Exuberant support in such a crucial moment of time. Loss of any data would have created major problems for the DNDCCB Bank, but we were fortunate enough that ESDS restored entire banking operation from the DR site with 0 data loss.

About US:

ESDS restored entire banking operation from the DR site with 0 data loss.

For more information, visit us at: Disaster Recovery AND Data Center

How Companies use Machine Learning

Day-by-day Machine Learning is becoming popular among industries and business owners have finally started to believe that it can bring a colossal change in their business’s efficiency. Many experts say that machine learning is breakthrough as big as the internet and the personal computer. Since the past decade, people have started to learn about ML and understand what it can bring to the table when implemented in their business. ML is not a completely flourished technology but people are giving it a chance because it can provide huge boost to their businesses. Still a large number of audiences are not aware about what machine learning actually is even though they have been using it for the past 5 years in the form of Siri, Cortona, Google Maps and even the recommendations while shopping online are a part of ML. A lot of businesses are still figuring out the application area of ML in their business. Even if they want to implement ML in their business, they are not completely educated about the process of ML adoption. 

The need of ML is seen by organizations and these are the points which assures us why they are ready to adopt this technology:

1. Growing data and cheaper storage

The growth of cloud computing has provided one important thing which is the storage function. Data generated by organizations is huge and to store it in a safer manner is an important decision. ML makes use of data for deriving decisions and when data is stored on cloud, it is easier to refer the data for analytics purposes. As the service offered by cloud computing is cheap, organizations use cloud services for their data storage needs as it provided optimum security and accessibility through remote locations.

2. Data Libraries

Data libraries are open to everyone and it also provides cutting edge algorithms to data scientists who make use of an organizations data to analyze upcoming opportunities.

3. High-end Platform

Cloud technology is one such platform which provides powerful hardware and customization option which can be highly suitable for ML algorithms. Due to powerful processing capabilities, ML on cloud can be a good match for any organization.

These are some of basic points which drive an organization’s decision towards the adoption of ML in their businesses.

Further we will see how companies use ML in their day-to-day business functions to get the most out of their investments. I will shed lights on the below points which are important while using ML:

1. Intelligently Acquiring Customers

Anyone will agree on how vital it is to acquire new customers, because every business needs a huge customer base. To acquire new customers, there are three steps to go forward with which are; understanding the need of the audience, engaging them with your products and services and finally converting them into your customer. ML algorithms make use of such customer data and recommend the suitable prospects who can potentially become your customers. For example – Amazon’s website uses machine learning to recommend products to their website visitors while they are searching for a similar product. Here ML understands the customer’s choices and recommends products accordingly. The customer is kept engaged and there is a good chance that he/she will purchase a certain product.

2. Top-Level Customer Support

Serving a customer does not end after the sale is made but the real support starts after the sale is made. The problem faced by many companies is that they are not able to retain many of their customers due to lack of support when their customer was facing certain issues with the product or a service. An organization gains trust of a customer only when they have helped him/her through the problematic phase and provided them with an optimum solution. With ML in the scene now, users are managed and supported way more efficiently than ever before due to fast problem solving time and handling multiple queries at once. High level solutions are provided to the customers through chatbots which has proved beneficial for the organization by keeping the trust and customer retention intact.

3. Business Forecasting

Every owner forecasts multiple areas in his/her business which gives an idea about the needs which can arise in the future. To anticipate situations which are unplanned, organizations stay one step ahead to predict outcomes. Through the help of ML, forecasting can be made easy in order to be prepared for any uncertain demands which might arise. Inventory and sales are the two most important examples which are predicted in order to never fall short supply. Sales performance can be tracked through forecasting by ML integration.

4. Managing People

To hire the right person for the right profile is being taken care by the Human Resources but they can take help of ML to find the right candidates for the right job by past hiring decisions, resumes and job description. There can be human errors in any field and HR is not exception and that’s why ML can track the precise candidates which were overlooked by the HR in the first place.

Conclusion

Organizations are already hugely benefiting by implementing Machine Learning in their business. Many processes have improved through the expertise of this technology. In the future we hope that ML algorithms upgrade and help in each and every department of the company.

Here’s why 280+ Indian banks chose ESDS’ Banking Community Cloud services

Cloud has been playing an essential role in the digital transformation taking place in the banking sector right from the beginning. In fact, right from the time since banks have started adopting market changes and incorporating all new technological trend. It’s just a matter of some time when ESDS introduced the concept of Banking Community Cloud in the IT and BFSI segment. And this idea that is initiated by ESDS proved to be really useful one on the national level. It is world’s first BFSI Community Cloud that has already connected more than 280 co-operative Indian banks. ESDS’ Banking Community Cloud platform includes everything right from digital banking, IT infrastructure, hosted payment platform, AI chatbot, and its own security scanner called MTvScan. ESDS is currently connected to and is monitoring 2,000+ bank branches, more than 280 banks are hosted on eNlight Cloud Platform for DC & DR services, and also we are the 1st successfully implemented Indian ASP model.

What makes ESDS’ Banking Community Cloud the most preferred choice?

ESDS specializes in delivering turnkey DC services and business continuity with state-of-the-art facilities fully supported by its exuberant project engineers. We are single-point operators responsible for all data center services including consulting, implementation, RIM and monitoring. We design, supply, install and operate data centers in full capacity with the expertise to customize solutions as per business requirement. You can also reduce total cost of ownership with ESDS' turnkey data center solution on real-time basis. ESDS also has tie-ups with numerous CBS and ASP vendors present in the market. They trust us too since their applications work in a perfectly stable manner on our cloud environment. No ASP has ever faced any issues after they have been hosted with us. Also, there are small banks who cannot invest much on DC infrastructure and to boost the small banking sector ESDS provides them with flexible packages including affordable customized commercial payment models. ESDS’ exuberant support, 24x7 availability, delivery of services on time along with certifications like STQC, PCI-DSS and ISO have made us the preferred choice of banks.

ESDS’ USP:

We are so far the strongest data center services provider having a set of solutions for the banking sector. Our deep understanding of core banking solution coupled with complete banking services along with additional services like ATM, POS machines, cards, connectivity and others makes us stay ahead in the game. Our BFSI service portfolio includes services like Core Banking, IMPS, UPI, Cheque Truncation System (CTS), ATM Switching, Document Management System (DMS), Electronic Know Your Customer (eKYC), Central Know your Customer (CKYC), Anti Money Laundering (AML), Asset Liability Management (ALM) apart from applications in the insurance segment.

ESDS’ Banking Community Cloud is created especially for the cooperative banking sector that is compliant with all the RBI guidelines, IT Act, PCI DSS audit and all the rules set up by regulating authorities. Moreover, the cloud takes care of scalability, performance and fulfills all demands of the banking sector. Solutions like colocation, dedicated server hosting, private cloud hosting, public cloud hosting and others are customized according to every bank’s requirements. According to RBI rules all banks have to get the DR drills done. ESDS conducts these drills for respective banks irrespective of the fact that the DR is hosted with us or not and in spite of all the challenges faced like permissions, users required to perform testing and others.

What are the pros of getting hosted on eNlight Cloud?

• There is a flexible billing model of services, wherein billing starts only when the application in all the branches is LIVE

• The pay-per-consume billing model saves a lot of expenses as clients only have to pay for the resource allocated and consumed

• Customers are offered virtual infrastructure instead of dedicated servers

• You get an added benefit as the CAPEX to OPEX profit ratio is high

• Clients also get bundled DC-DR package

We at ESDS also expect to onboard 1000 more co-operative banks by 2020 and make the bank sector agile and good enough to compete against their competitors.

About US:

We at ESDS also expect to onboard 1000 more co-operative banks by 2020 and make the bank sector agile and good enough to compete against their competitors. For more information, visit us at: Core Banking in India AND digital banking

Why Smart Cities need solid cloud computing foundation

A city is not just as smart as its people, but also as much as its computing prowess and in that department cloud is the over-arching technology with super computer-like proficiency. The First-ever IDC Smart Cities Spending Guide released in March this year predicted that spending will accelerate over the 2016-2021 forecast period, reaching $45.3 billion in 2021. In Asia-Pacific (except Japan) alone, the Smart Cities will consume $28.3 billion in 2018 alone! With such investment-heavy projects in the offing, use of the best technology in business is only just organic.

About Smart Cities
 
To have sustainable economic development and improve the quality of life of citizens, countries all over the world are proceeding towards establishing ‘smart cities’. Now, any city cannot be termed smart if it has certain amount of automation incorporated in its system. A city can be called 'smart' if this economic development and high quality of life is achieved along with organized conservation of natural resources as well as with participation from its citizens. The investments in human capital and technology should produce a smart city that include networking applications, data management and optimization, sensors, software and real-time information analytics that can transform the urban environment and address specific needs.

Thus, use of ICT solutions is inevitable. These can help in resolving urban problems and monitor their functions. While new technology and innovation are the need of the hour in any Smart City solutions, there is also the need of great capacity.

Cloud Technology 

A common string that connects the entire smart city is data and not just some but terabytes and petabytes of data that gadgets connected to people, buildings and transportation among other things create. Without a strategic approach to control this data smart cities cannot deliver on their promise.
Handling such huge quantity of heterogeneous data requires high storage capacity and computing power. For this, the continually developing cloud computing scenario coupled with Internet of Things needs to be widely deployed in cities. The cloud will facilitate storage, integration, processing and analysis of this big data in low time frames.

Currently, many citizen services involving IT are delivered by domain-specific vendors through tightly coupled systems. Services like transportation or health care have domain-specific application requirements leading to isolated systems with firmly joined infrastructure and application logic. Scalability is a challenge in these systems, and the creation of new services is hampered due to closed relationships between stakeholders. Cloud solutions can reduce such intergovernmental silos wherein different departments have no idea or understanding of what other departments are doing. Such domain-independent, cloud-based service-delivery platform for smart cities delivers an open and scalable platform and encourages collaboration between stakeholders in both IoT and clouds.
Cloud solutions can also support both public and private deployment models. In the former, the stakeholders can keep their applications on a public cloud while in the latter, they can deploy services on equipment at their own sites and feel the maximum potential of privacy and security requirements.
The rise of IoT has given birth to thousands of interconnected devices that can be exploited for mischievous purposes posing demonstrable security risks that clouds can aptly eliminate.

Clouds also help in extracting maximum value from the data received since not all data needs to go to the same applications all the time, but the right data needs to get to the correct applications at the right time. Clouds can help in managing data across all environments including edge, data center, private, public, hybrid clouds and the billions of connected devices being added to the network.
Thus, a well-built cloud platform can offer a cohesive, single-window view with quick scalability that enables quicker processing of the data at the source for faster and more accurate results.

Well, we reserved the biggest benefit for the ending note! Clouds can enable operations cost reduction in Smart Cities. A city is not a smart one until it utilizes its resources optimally and that also includes capital.

About US:
 
A city is not a smart one until it utilizes its resources optimally and that also includes capital. For more information, Visit us at: smart city architecture AND smart cities in India

The Digital Banking Benefits You Need to Know About

Many of us cannot imagine a life without online banking. Transfer of funds, checking of accounts, making payments, everything can now be done with a few clicks on the computer or the phone. Besides these benefits, digital banking offers a lot more to the public who want to open their eyes and see it. It is also crossing a lot of barriers to bring about real change in the world of banks. Recent advances in the banking and financial sector like blockchain, IoT, eKYC and artificial intelligence are all digitally-inclined. While banks, small and big, all over the world take the automated push, the above mentioned modern modes are all set to change the way we look at banking today. Here’s a peak in to what advantages does digital or online banking offer: 

1. Easy-Peasy: Though Digital Banking has not entirely replaced the brick and mortar banks; it is definitely the more preferred option. Long queues have been cut and reasons to visit a bank in physical have reduced to almost none. Everything from opening and account to managing savings can be done online. Banks too are adding more and more services on their web portals that are refurbished as many times as needed. A virtual account in which you can actually view your monetary arrangements clearly has helped people have a more organized financial life.
Apart from this 24x7 online banking services is another added advantage for users who feel more in control of their accounts and finances.

2. Mobile Banking: Today most banks have their own mobile apps that provide all the advantages of online banking on the phone. The evolution from text alerts and phone banking to app banking services has been an important one. It is quicker and more convenient. Check up on your account when you are out shopping or conduct speedy real-time transfers when you are making a purchase, mobile banking is definitely making online banking easier.

3. Money Applications: After demonetization in India, money applications like Pay TM and TEZ have gained supreme popularity. These apps can automatically sync with one’s online banking information and helps in adhering to targeted budgets while shopping or purchasing. Many of these apps work on both the computer and mobile device for higher degree of information when one the go. E-statements are also important to be prevented from overdrawing one’s account.

4. Security: While online transactions are always marred with a certain sense of insecurity, experts believe that if one is careful there is no safer or private system. Firstly, clear cookies after any banking session at a public computer. Create long and complicated passwords that cannot be hacked. Don’t ever share your online account information with anybody. Always keep a track of your credit report. Prevent yourself from identity theft with these measures.

5. Cost-effective: For banks, digital banking has lowered the operating costs by eliminating back-office processing operations, fewer mistakes and fewer branch visits needed to less staff requirements. Yes, going digital does mean investing in a reliable and scalable IT infrastructure but it also means independence from legacy systems that often stall a bank’s progress. Apparently, banks are worried about investing in for a change but smarter businessmen always know that not investing in a change might prove to be costlier later.

These benefits of insignificant infrastructure and overhead costs helps banks to better serve their customers by lowering interest rates on savings and loans. No minimum balance accounts and no service fees is a result of such automated banking.

Meanwhile, digitalization in banking has already put a stop on several malpractices like circulation of counterfeit notes which has been a major threat to the economy since many years. Also, taking customer feedback has become easy now enabling the banks to give better services. Digital banking also means more digital data and this means that big data analysis can be carried out by banks to analyze data accurately. This will eventually lead to better decision making, more cost-effective solutions, and improved customer experience.

About US:

Digital banking also means more digital data and this means that big data analysis, for more information visit us at: Digital Banking AND mobile banking solution