IBM CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY

Customer: Tallahassee Community College

Industry: Education

Geography: United States

IBM Business Partner: Mainline Information Systems, Red Hat

Business Challenge:
Needing to grow its organization to keep pace with its student body, TCC sought to update its aging IT infrastructure. Its existing environment included an IBM zSeries® 890 mainframe, a storage area network (SAN) with 1TB of capacity and a Novell net­work. The college wanted to boost its technology with reliable, flexible and scalable hardware that featured additional storage capacity to support new initiatives.

Solution: With help from IBM and IBM Business Partner Mainline Information Systems, TCC migrated its applications from its mainframe to an IBM System x™ platform featuring one IBM System x3950 server that hosts the production environment and runs the Red Hat Enterprise Linux® operating system and one System x3950 server that hosts a test environment.

Benefits: Achieves roughly US$250,000 per year in savings by growing its SAN, enabling the college to reallocate the funds to its operating budget. Enables the client to tackle new initiatives with greater flexibility and storage capacity. Supports all of the college’s different enterprise applications and enables it to provide students and faculty with larger storage accounts for e-mail and personalized Web portals

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Background
Founded in 1966, Tallahassee Community College (TCC) is a comprehensive open-admission community college. It aims to deliver excellence in teaching and learning through educational programs that promote students’ intellectual, social and personal development.

Challenge
Needing to grow its organization to keep pace with its student body, TCC sought to update its aging IT infrastructure. Its existing environment included an IBM zSeries® 890 mainframe, a storage area network (SAN) with 1TB of capacity and a Novell network. The college wanted to boost its technology with reliable, flexible and scalable hardware that featured additional storage capacity to support new initiatives.

Solution
With help from IBM and IBM Business Partner Mainline Information Systems, TCC migrated its applications from its mainframe to an IBM System x™ platform featuring one IBM System x3950 server that hosts the production environment and runs the Red Hat Linux® operating system and one System x3950 server that hosts a test environment.

To support the institution’s new initiatives, TCC also installed a 25TB SAN composed of an IBM System Storage™ DS4800 device with two IBM System Storage DS4000™ EXP810 Expansion Units. The storage and application servers connect via four 4GB IBM SAN Switches.

TCC leverages IBM Tivoli® Storage Manager software to back up its applications.

Benefits
• Achieves roughly US$250,000 per year in savings by growing its SAN, enabling the college to reallocate the funds to its operating budget
• Enables the client to tackle new initiatives with greater flexibility and storage capacity
• Supports all of the college’s different enterprise applications and enables it to provide students and faculty with larger storage accounts for e-mail and personalized Web portals

“By deploying the IBM System x and IBM System Storage solutions, we save about US$250,000 in IT costs each year. We can now reallocate that money and use it in a way that benefits the students.” —Tallahassee Community College

The Ministry of Housing, Construction and Sanitation of Peru Implemented Zimbra Collaboration Suite on Red Hat Enterprise Linux to Achieve Greater Scalability, Security and Productivity

FAST FACTS

Company: Ministerio de Vivienda: Peru’s Ministry of Housing, Construction, and Sanitation

Industry: Government

Partner: Software Libre Andino

Geography: Peru

Business Challenge: Needed to replace the existing client/server e-mail and collaboration platform to achieve improved scalability, security, productivity, and to reduce costs

Software: Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Zimbra Collaboration Suite, Alfresco Zimlet, Red Hat Consulting

Hardware: Dell Quad Core Server, 3.0 Ghz, 8GB ram, 1.5 Tb. Fully redundant

Migration Path: From a client/server system running on Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise to Zimbra Collaboration Suite, a Web-based email technology, running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and utilizing Alfresco Zimlet

Benefits: Improved communication and collaboration among users and provided a single integrated calendar and email solution; increased access to e-mail, agendas, and documents independently from physical equipment; reduced IT administration and support costs by standardizing on Red Hat Enterprise Linux

“The high level of know-how and expertise of Red Hat’s consultants, coupled with Red Hat’s local presence, were decisive in making the decision to secure consulting rather than performing these tasks internally.”
– Jaime Honores Coronado, managing director of the General Department of Statistics and Information Systems, Ministerio de Vivienda.

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BACKGROUND
Ministerio de Vivienda, Peru’s Ministry of Housing, Construction, and Sanitation, is a government agency whose goal is to promote and improve the development of housing, water, and sanitation services throughout Peru by facilitating access to adequate housing and basic services, facilitating the management, growth, preservation, maintenance, and protection of population centers.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Building community in Peru is a key objective for the Ministry of Housing, Construction, and Sanitation. And technology—in the form of email, calendaring, messaging, and collaboration solutions—has become an essential tool in achieving that objective. The Ministry realized it was outgrowing its communications infrastructure, and the IT team began planning for the task of replacing its aging client/server email and calendar systems.

The Ministry’s aging and limited email communications platform was based on SUSE Enterprise Linux with Postfix and Horde for Web customers. Users relied on different versions of Microsoft Outlook to check their email, resulting in challenges due to the platform age and configuration. The platform also caused the need to add an exclusive server allocated to this service. The Ministry’s main problem consisted of the lack of scalability and security, and limited flexibility in management and constrained the user interface.

SOLUTION
In early 2009, the Ministry made the decision to evaluate solutions to replace its expensive proprietary software with lower cost, open source alternatives for a Web-based email solution with integrated email, calendar, and messaging.

The Ministry worked with Software Libre Andino, a Red Hat and Zimbra partner in Peru, in the evaluation process to replace its outdated systems.

“We needed a quick-to-deploy and easy-to-manage solution. We assessed several proposals from various vendors, among them, SUSE Linux and Microsoft Windows-based solutions, but we chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Zimbra Collaboration Suite, and Alfresco, for the cost savings, simplified administration, reliability, and quick implementation,” said Jaime Honores Coronado, managing director of the General Department of Statistics and Information Systems, Ministerio de Vivienda.

The entire project consisted of Red Hat Enterprise Linux with Zimbra Collaboration Suite, including the migration of each account, installation, configuration, start-up, technical, and end-user training. Email accounts were configured with a 900 MB per user quota.

With Zimbra Collaboration Suite, Red Hat Enterprise Linux serves as the primary development and deployment platform for the open source email platform. Zimbra Collaboration Suite integrates email, contacts, shared calendar, voice over IP (VoIP), and online document authoring into a single application with a rich browser-based interface, and is compatible with all standard email clients, and integrates easily with third-party applications.

The Ministry was able to deploy the Alfresco Zimlet, a tool created by Zimbra community members to allow a simple way for employees to store email attachments on the Alfresco server, and in turn select documents from the Alfresco server and attach them to a Zimbra email. This tool created by the open source community makes it easy for government agencies or companies to invest in multiple open source products to meet their needs.

Although the Ministry’s technical staff had minimal experience with a web-based email technology, Red Hat Consulting facilitated a faster implementation and provided the technical staff with the knowledge and tools to effectively manage the new platform.

“The high level of know-how and expertise of Red Hat’s consultants, coupled with Red Hat’s local presence, were decisive in making the decision to secure consulting rather than performing these tasks internally. Red Hat, through partner Software Libre Andino, contributed to service deployment, technical, and end-user training, and the migration of old e-mail accounts, allowing our team to quickly become experts,” said Coronado.

BENEFITS
The Zimbra Collaboration Suite e-mail platform based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux immediately improved the productivity and coordination of the Ministry’s employees by enhancing collaboration and sharing of work agendas.

“We have achieved a larger physical distribution of our users who are now capable of accessing their e-mail accounts wherever they are. Our investment project coordinators can perform Web queries of their local e-mail, manage their work agendas, and refer to the document management system, all in one single platform,” said Coronado.

During the evaluation, the Ministry weighed Microsoft Exchange against Zimbra Collaboration Suite, and determined that the latter would account for 30 percent savings compared with the former. Zimbra’s own studies show similar TCO savings.

Saving the government money is definitely one reason for the switch to Zimbra, but another important factor in its decision to deploy open source solutions is that open source platforms allow users to easily integrate and build new solutions.

The Ministry’s future plans contemplate expanding the use of the solution by integrating it with other applications and platforms. Engineer Honores Coronado said, “We hope to continue our commitment to open source solutions and trust in Red Hat as the ideal partner for our projects.”

“The Zimbra and Red Hat solution provides a cost-effective platform that allows for greater efficiency and a unified email and collaboration platform,” said Coronado. “And we also benefited from significant cost savings with Red Hat Enterprise Linux.”

Category: Joint Red Hat / JBoss Deployment

Winner: DST Health Solutions

Submitted by: Gary Krasovic

Industry: Health Information Systems

Geography: Birmingham, Alabama

Overview

Selected for their use of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JEMS to build a consumer-directed healthcare solution that was first-to-market, yielding immediate customer traction, increased market visibility, thus reflective of corporate leadership and success.

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DST Health Solutions is a wholly owned subsidiary of DST Systems, Inc., a publicly traded mutual fund processing company with approximately 10,000 employees worldwide. The DST Health Solutions subsidiary has 1,000 employees dedicated to delivering applications and outsourcing services that improve efficiency, reduce operational costs, increase speed to market, and improve customer service for health plans, consumer-directed health plans, Medicare plans, and physician practices. DST Health Solutions’ enterprise applications and ASP and BPO services support 390 healthcare clients, representing 38 million covered lives, 360 million health plan claims, 30 million physician business transactions, and 450,000 consumer-directed members annually.

2. Please describe the business and/or technical challenges you faced in this project.

Three years ago, DST Health Solutions began developing a consumer-directed platform for self-administration of flexible spending accounts (FSAs), health spending accounts (HSAs), and health reimbursement arrangements (HRAs). Previously, consumers could only access or make changes to their accounts by calling a claims support representative. Due to the growing demand for consumer driven health products, DST Health Solutions wanted to be first to market with a software solution that allowed members to log in and administer their own accounts. However, the company mainly focused on developing larger, more lenient business-to-business solutions that didn’t require the constant uptime of a consumer web application.

Since developing a member accessed application was new territory, DST Health Solutions wanted to start with a conservative approach, while still providing the reliability demanded by consumers. DST Health Solutions needed a technology it could implement at a low cost and scale over time as membership numbers grew. Also important was technology agility, since DST Health Solutions wanted to put the systems together quickly without first building an extensive infrastructure.

3. What was the desired solution?

DST Health Solutions needed a low cost, small volume stack that would scale with demand. Flexibility was a key factor, since the company wanted to get the system up and running quickly and then develop an appropriate infrastructure to support ongoing growth. The goal was to build the system on inexpensive Intel-class hardware, with one application server and one database server, monitor the load, and quickly scale as needed. DST Health Solutions also knew it needed to guarantee uptime to ensure customer satisfaction.

4. Please describe your vendor selection process and why you chose Red Hat in the end.

The decision to use JBoss Application Server was initially one of necessity for DST Health Solutions. After considering several solutions, the company determined that the Sun application server didn’t have the functionality needed, and Weblogic and Websphere were too cost prohibitive. A developer within DST Health Solutions started coding using JBoss and brought it into the organization. The organization immediately liked JBoss Application Server’s flexibility, resulting in its quick acceptance. On the operating system side, DST Health Solutions used Novell’s SUSE with JBoss for a short time before moving to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. SUSE was too unstable, and SUSE running on Oracle servers didn’t provide the expected reliability. RHEL offered DST Health Solutions a cost-effective, rigorously tested technology that met the company’s reliability and scalability needs. Additionally, the Red Hat Network (RHN) systems management platform would allow for easy maintenance and monitoring of the system.

5. What role did Red Hat and/or JBoss products play in the final solution?

Red Hat and JBoss significantly contributed to the affordability and scalability of the project. Red Hat made administration of the whole infrastructure easier through use of the RHN management tools that enable the company to easily provision new systems as demand warrants, download important patches and configuration changes, and monitor the status of its 50-60 servers. Because Red Hat Enterprise Linux is so agile, it can easily scale to handle large numbers of subscribers as well as heavy loads during peak times, such as open enrollment, when demand is high. RHEL also makes it simple to deploy new servers to grow the network without creating administration headaches.

The modularity of JEMS made it possible for DST Health Solutions to pick only the software development solutions it needed. The company uses JBoss Application Server to develop and grow its web application, Hibernate to eliminate the need for extra coding, and JBoss jBPM to facilitate business processes and workflow. As part of its subscription, DST Health Solutions utilizes JBoss Operations Network (JBoss ON) and has implemented the Monitoring Module that provides the company with advanced monitoring capabilities, pre-selected statistics, and the ability to create custom statistics.

6. What was the overall impact of the project on your business? (e.g. improved ROI, increased competitive advantage, better time to market, etc.)

The health insurance industry is historically slow to adapt new technology. Using Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss to develop, deploy, and scale its FSA, HSA, and HRA consumer-directed healthcare product allowed DST Health Solutions to be first to market and quickly attract large enterprise customers.

7. What value did you gain from implementing Red Hat solutions? If a gain in efficiency, how were those additional resources allocated within your company?

When DST Health Solutions first developed its consumer-directed healthcare product, a separate holding company owned the technology and CDH solution. DST Health Solutions credits the market visibility gained because of its new offering and resulting customer success with making the company an attractive acquisition target for DST Systems. DST Health Solutions’ success using Red Hat and JBoss solutions in a production environment is leading its parent company, also a Red Hat and JBoss user, to explore using the technology beyond its current development and testing environments.

DST Health Solutions currently supports more than 450,000 lives on our CDH solution. DST Health Solutions was awarded a prestigious opportunity to serve one of the nations leading financial/ banking institutions. Scalability was the key business need for this financial institution, as their consumerism offering expands and CDH members increase dramatically. The Red Hat framework afforded DST Health Solutions the flexibility and scalability to quickly adapt and deploy new lines of business, which further supported strategic decisions and penetration into evolving markets.

8. Please provide a technical description of implementation, including the size of deployment. (i.e. Hardware specs, applications, O/S, databases, etc.)

DST Health Solutions uses 10 production application servers and three database servers, all of which are HP DL or BL class running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4. All systems use AMD Operton processors and some feature SAN booting for easy system provisioning. The company also uses version 3.0.28 of the JBoss Application Server, with plans to move to version 4 soon. Other JEMS products used include Hibernate for object/relational mapping and JBoss jBPM for workflow applications.

9. Did you leverage Red Hat support services, training, or consulting? If so, please describe your experience?

DST is a JBoss Platinum and a Red Hat Basic support customer. Skilled Red Hat engineers provide a high level of RHEL support when needed. Since DST Health Solutions began receiving support directly from JBoss, the company has enjoyed high-quality, prompt answers to its inquiries. While the company has not used consulting services because of the rapidity with which it put the system together, it foresees using these services in the future to help improve system performance.

10. Do you have advice for other companies facing a similar business challenge?

Because it offers the maturity of older technologies and the innovation of newer solutions, Red Hat provides a nice medium for developers coming from an HP-Unix background. The more mature and conservative RHEL packages, testing, releases, and patches provide a stable solution for any project. While JBoss is more cutting-edge than Red Hat, it is easy to deploy and provides the stability needed in a production environment.

Industry: Hosting services

Geography: St. Louis, MO

Opportunity: Build a hosting business providing excellent value, support, and low prices; implement scalable backup and restoration solution that could support phenomenal growth rates

Migration Path: Novell Linux Enterprise SUSE to Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Software: Red Hat Enterprise Linux; Red Hat Global File System and Cluster Suite; Red Hat Network; JBoss Enterprise Application Platform and Hibernate; MySQL, Oracle, and Postgres databases; BakBone NetVault: Backup

Hardware: Dell PowerEdge Series servers

Benefits: Helped achieve phenomenal customer growth rates by facilitating sales and customer support and supporting scalability of new backup and restoration system

Opportunity

When Contegix decided to offer hosting services in 2003, the company required an enterprise-class, affordable Linux solution from the right vendor. “Hosting customers expect the utmost network reliability and protection from their service providers, and we wanted to create a completely worry-free data center experience for them. The operating system we chose would play a key role in that experience,” said Matthew Porter, CEO of Contegix. Within a few years of deploying Red Hat, the company is now growing between 300 and 400% annually. To provide continued reliability and uptime for its quickly expanding customer base, Contegix required a more scalable backup and recovery solution. “Although we were running Red Hat Enterprise Linux on 99% of our servers, our backup solution ran on Novell’s Linux Enterprise SUSE, which was difficult to administer. We knew we needed to find a backup solution that ran on Red Hat,” said Porter.

Solution

To help build its hosting business initially, Contegix chose Red Hat for its expert Linux knowledge and responsiveness to customer needs. “Red Hat really understands the hosting market and meets our customers’ needs for specific services such as indemnification protection. In addition, Red Hat’s subscription model is based on number of servers not license fees, enabling us to offer the best pricing to our customers,” said Porter. When it was time to find a new backup solution earlier this year, Red Hat played a huge role in the decision. “We chose BakBone because it enabled maximum scalability, provided excellent support, and offered Red Hat ready software,” he said.

BakBone worked closely with Contegix to design and implement a backup and restoration solution around its NetVault: Backup software, ensuring the new deployment was up and running within ten days. The choice to use BakBone enabled Contegix to transition its backup servers to Red Hat Enterprise Linux and improve system administration. “By implementing Red Hat Global File System and Cluster Suite we were able to overcome the clustering and file system issues we experienced with SUSE. Plus, Red Hat supports SAN as well as Fibre Channel SCSI devices, simplifying our backup processes even further,” said Porter.

Contegix operates thousands of Dell PowerEdge Series servers running RHEL 3, 4, and 5 and a variety of MySQL, Oracle, and Postgres databases. Three backup servers run the BakBone NetVault: Backup solution. Many customers also run a range of JBoss solutions including JBoss 3 and up and Hibernate on Contegix managed servers.

In addition, Contegix fully utilizes all Red Hat services including Red Hat Network, Red Hat Exchange, and the Red Hat Hosting Program. Red Hat Network notifies Contegix of new RHEL updates and patches and facilitates managing upgrades and configuration changes to customer servers. “Red Hat Exchange informs us of new applications tested on RHEL and delivers them through Red Hat Network. We then offer those applications to our customers as part of their fixed monthly cost. Thanks to the Red Hat Hosting Program, which specifically designed a subscription model for our needs, our customers pay a low price, yet receive extra value,” said Porter.

Benefits

Red Hat has helped Contegix cultivate its commitment to excellent customer support since the start of the company. “We answer every support ticket in five minutes, so it’s critical that the vendors we choose have the same level of commitment to us. Red Hat has always provided the support we needed when we needed it,” said Porter. With the company’s rapid growth, Red Hat’s understanding of the hosting business has proven even more essential. “Every one of our customers is unique, so the support experience of our vendors has to be very broad. Red Hat and BakBone are not only responsive, but also have a deep understanding of a wide variety of user environments, helping us resolve even the most difficult technical issues,” he said.

Red Hat plays a significant role in expediting the Contegix sales process. Most engineers are familiar with the reliability and support benefits of working with Red Hat, alleviating any concerns they might have regarding the management of their infrastructures. In addition, Red Hat’s wide network of certified vendors reassures customers that their applications will work smoothly with RHEL. Red Hat also provides ready-made FAQs and RFPs, which Contegix uses in its sales process when necessary. “Showing customers we use Red Hat makes for an easy sale. They know Red Hat means lower costs and better solutions for them,” he said.

Over the last four years, Red Hat has helped Contegix grow its customer base at phenomenal rates. “Red Hat enabled us to grow unbelievably fast by providing customers continuously with new solutions at low prices. We couldn’t have achieved our 400% annual growth rate without Red Hat,” said Porter. Today, the new backup system deployment provides Contegix with the scalability it needs to support continued growth. “Before our Red Hat-BakBone implementation, we were spending more than 40 hours per week managing backups and recoveries. The new system speeded restoration time by five times and eliminated the need to hire an additional engineer,” he said. In the future, Contegix plans to open its first data center outside of St. Louis, populating its servers with Red Hat and BakBone solutions. “We love Red Hat and BakBone,” said Porter.

Bank expects to save $1 million over two years after adopting Linux as its infrastructure platform.

Industry: Banking
Geography: India

Central Bank of India is one of the largest banks in India. Established in 1911, it was the first Indian commercial bank to be wholly owned and managed by Indians. Sir Sorabji Pochkhanawala, founder of the Bank proudly declared on its establishment that Central Bank was the ‘property of the nation and the country’s asset.’ The bank’s customer base of 25 million is among the largest in the industry and it has 3115 branches spread across the vast geography of India. Progressive management and far-sighted leadership have ensured that the bank has maintained its status as an asset for the country.

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Challenges

CBI’s Total Branch Automation (TBA) applications were running on a diverse mix of platforms. The bank had around 13 different TBA software vendors with each vendor’s software optimized for a different platform. The banking network was therefore a mix of Windows, Sun Solaris, Novell Netware. Also, multiple solutions from various vendors meant a lot of effort on training the staff and frequent job transfers added to the challenge of training the employees.

With 3115 branches and 286 extension counters across India, scaling up its heterogeneous network was a major challenge for the bank. Changes in banking regulations also mandated that banks had to achieve total computerization by December 2004. In the year 2000, CBI therefore decided to look at revamping its computing infrastructure.

For CBI, scalability, ease of support and maintenance was a key requirement in selecting the operating system platform. The bank has a far-flung network that reaches remote parts of India; one of the bank’s branches is located 12,000 feet above sea level. In case of a system failure, getting support to these locations would be difficult. Therefore, CBI wanted a system that was robust, relatively immune to viruses and could be supported and maintained easily even in remote locations. This would allow the bank to minimize downtime and deliver a consistently high level of customer service throughout its network.
Being a bank, reliability and security were both high on the priority list. On the LAN based solution that the bank was using earlier, reliability was a problem. Virus attacks would bring the whole network down and CBI did not have the expertise to resolve these problems at the grassroots level. Network downtime, system crashes etc were problem areas because they brought business to a standstill and adversely affected customer satisfaction.

Solution

Though Linux was relatively new as an enterprise operating system in 2000, the momentum behind the platform convinced CBI that it should go with Linux. The support provided by Red Hat and by IT giants like IBM and Oracle added to the crucial peace-of-mind factor and made the choice easier.

The bank narrowed down its list of TBA vendors to two. Also, these vendors were willing to port their applications to Linux. TBA applications on the Cobol/Btrieve/Novell Netware platform were migrated to the more robust Red Hat and Oracle combination.

CBI’s pilot tests of the Red Hat and Oracle combination went off so smoothly that its employees were not even aware of the migration from the legacy Cobol/Btrieve/Novell Netware environment.

“That was a turning point and we decided to carry the migration to Red Hat Linux forward. Normally, there is resistance to change but in this case, people were not even aware anything had changed. The migration to Red Hat Linux has been so successful that we have now rolled it out over 1,115 branches,” says Raghuraman.

Most of CBI’s 25 million customers are now served by the bank’s implementation of Linux that supports critical banking processes including inter-branch reconciliation, accounts and balance sheet dealing, credit disbursement, telebanking and cheque collection.

Benefits

K Raghuraman, GM, IT, Central Bank of India, estimates that by standardizing on Red Hat in the branches across the Bank, CBI will generate savings of about $1 million over a two year period by way of License fees, Training and Maintenance cost.

Many of the bank’s branches are being computerized for the first time and therefore ease-of-maintenance is extremely important. The bank found that Linux fits the bill because its stability eliminates the need for heavy-duty support. The bank cannot afford to have its computers crash or hang especially when customers transactions are being executed.

“In a nutshell, the advantage of using Red Hat is that it is hassle free. In the cities, maintenance and support is not such a challenge because you can always find people to rush to the location and resolve the problem; you can’t do that in a remote branch that’s 12,000 feet above sea level. We have proved to the world that Linux works in a decentralized and geographically dispersed network like ours.

“Red Hat’s OS requires very little maintenance and that’s a boon for a bank like ours that has many far-flung locations. The system runs smoothly; it does not have the virus issues that plague other platforms and we haven’t had problems with scalability or corruption of data. Our Linux systems have been trouble-free since we started deployment,” says Raghuraman. By using a more robust and secure system that’s less prone to virus attacks and system crashes, the bank has increased customer satisfaction levels at the branches.

Raghuraman feels that, in today’s competitive world, Linux helps CIOs by helping them cut costs without compromising on security and sustainability.

“When we started deploying Linux, other banks asked us, “Are you sure you want to go with Linux? However, the fact that companies like IBM, Oracle and Red Hat were supporting Linux was a comfort to us. There is a lot of funds flowing into this area, support is easily available, there is plenty of research happening on Linux and its long-term sustainability is not in doubt. The choice was therefore very clear,” says Raghuraman.

At CBI, typically, the Linux-based systems are rebooted only once a year ensuring trouble-free maintenance for the bank. The bank has initiated an internal training effort program that covers 400 employees with some level of computer literacy. These staff members will be posted in key locations across the country to manage the IT infrastructure. Raghuraman feels that in today’s competitive environment, companies have to keep a tight leash on costs and Linux has helped the bank in this regard.

Conclusion

CBI has been a pioneer in the usage of IT and recently moved its entire computing infrastructure to Red Hat. CBI has executed successfully on a formidable challenge. By migrating to a completely new operating system, database and TBA application across 1,115 branches, the bank has conclusively proved that Linux is ready for enterprise desktops and servers even in a decentralized environment. In fact, CBI has made it mandatory that going forward all its applications should be on the Linux platform. The bank now plans to deploy Red Hat Enterprise Linux across all the remaining branches too. The bank also plans to deploy Linux across 23 Regional Rural Banks that it controls. These banks consist of 1,770 branches and over 5,000 computers. The cost savings expected through the deployment of Linux is therefore substantial.

Beyond cost savings, the bank also aims to empower its people through technology. “We want to deploy this technology even in remote branches and free our people from repetitive tasks so that they can focus on customer service and other activities that help grow the bank,” says Raghuraman.

For CBI, its bold bet on Linux has paid off handsomely and the bank’s IT infrastructure has become a role model for banks and enterprises to emulate.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux to power mission critical banking services on approximately 1,000 servers and 10,000 desktops. Largest deployment of Red Hat Enterprise Linux in the Indian BFSI segment till date

Industry: Banking

Geography: India

Challenges: Automate more than 1000 branches across the country. Modernize branch automation. Retain existing hardware. Seamlessly migrate a custom designed TBA package to the latest platform.

Solution: Software: Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Application: Integrated Branch Banking Software (IBBS)

Benefits: Improvement in system performance by more than 8 times. Significant TCO reduction by eliminating the need for purchasing new hardware and software licenses

This story is available in the following languages: [  ]

Introduction

Founded in 1906, Canara Bank is one of the premier banks in India, with a network of 2508 branches across the country. The bank was the first to launch networked ATMs in India and obtain an ISO Certification. Canara Bank has also achieved the distinction of being the country’s highest net profit earner among nationalized banks for the year March 2005.

The bank has already carved a niche in providing IT-based services such as Networked ATMs, Anywhere Banking, Telebanking, Remote Access Terminals, Internet & Mobile Banking, Debit Cards, etc. Canara Bank has a vision to help improve the economic condition of the common people of India by inculcating the habit of savings in rural areas.

Challenges

Canara Bank achieved 100% computerization very early in the course of its operational history. It deployed a number of bank automation tools such as a customized Total Branch Automation (TBA) package called Integrated Branch Banking Software (IBBS), which was developed by its subsidiary, CanBank Computer Services Ltd. (CCSL). IBBS was deployed on Novell NetWare at close to 1400 medium sized branches across the country.

Canara Bank follows a detailed tendering process for new hardware purchases, in which contracts are awarded on the basis of bids. After nearly a decade of deploying IBBS, the bank had purchased different types of hardware from multiple vendors. As a result, standardization on Novell NetWare became difficult, and supporting the legacy IBBS application became a challenging task.

Moreover, IBBS was developed using Microfocus COBOL and designed to run in a 16-bit DOS environment. With poor support for the TCP/IP protocol stack, the NetWare servers running IBBS could not be integrated into the corporate network easily. Essentially, the NetWare servers functioned as branch file servers, without any data connectivity. Regular maintenance of different versions of IBBS across 1400 branches was a painstaking effort in the absence of network support. Patching, troubleshooting and version upgrades had to be conducted onsite. Branches in rural and remote areas were particularly difficult to access and required support personnel to travel frequently. Also, the availability of certified hardware on NetWare was limited, which made adding new machines difficult.

As Canara Bank’s customer base expanded, its banking services began to scale, creating an immediate need for Internet Banking, Anywhere Banking (banking from any CanBank branch across the country) and an expanded ATM network. Novell NetWare’s closed legacy environment did not allow room to accommodate these new technologies. Canara Bank had to purchase additional machines running Microsoft Windows to interface with these new technologies, which was extremely inefficient from a hardware utilization standpoint. New hardware and Microsoft Windows licenses strained budgets and made new technology projects difficult to scale and sustain.

When additional branches were added to the bank’s network, procuring new servers that were certified to run on NetWare was difficult, as IHVs had ceased to provide support for older versions of the OS. Micro Focus had also ceased support for the COBOL version on which the IBBS package had been developed. A combination of all these factors made migration attractive.

Migrating the 1400 odd legacy NetWare servers posed another challenge: Canara Bank wanted to switch platforms but not hardware. Deploying the latest OS available, without going into a hardware refresh cycle that would cost millions of rupees was a challenging task. The bank had amassed about a dozen different types of machines after a decade of deploying IBBS. This heterogeneous mix of hardware that spanned across more than 1,000 servers and 10,000 desktops made the project very complex. Canara Bank began to look for a platform that could deliver the latest innovation along with complete hardware freedom.

Solution

After a detailed evaluation phase, Canara Bank decided to modernize branch automation by re-deploying IBBS on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux platform. The bank selected Red Hat Enterprise Linux as its platform of choice to replace NetWare servers at more than 1,000 branches across the country, after a successful pilot run. The project marks the largest roll out of Red Hat Enterprise Linux in the Indian BFSI vertical so far. The package was ported from NetWare to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux platform by CCSL.

The architecture of the application deployment was changed to a server-based processing model from the earlier client processing model. In addition to leveraging the improved performance provided by Red Hat Enterprise Linux on the server, this architecture provide several other benefits. For example, performance improvements can be achieved by upgrading only the server and clients need to be replaced only in case of hardware failure. This will result in substantial savings on hardware over the life of the system.

A customized, light version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux v.3 was specially developed by the Red Hat Engineering team to suit Canara Bank’s existing desktop hardware infrastructure. SSH connectivity allowed Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers to be easily and securely networked. This connectivity was used for both client access as well as for secure access for remote maintenance.

Upon the completion of the project, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, will be deployed on more than 1,000 servers and 10,000 desktops at Canara Bank. Under the first phase of deployment, Red Hat Enterprise Linux has been rolled out at approximately 500 branches in a record time of three months. Close to 500 Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers and 5000 Red Hat Desktops have been deployed in this phase. As part of its vision to introduce 100% modernization into its banking services environment, Canara Bank is actively pursuing deploying Enterprise Linux in additional branches as well.

Red Hat worked closely with Canara Bank to provide a stable and fine tuned platform for its desktop and servers. Red Hat also provided training and help desk services to Canara Bank for deployment and sustenance of the project over a long term. Reliable support and professional services and consulting were key factors behind Canara Bank’s decision of selecting Red Hat as its vendor of choice.

Benefits

Daily closure of books under the IBBS system running on Novell NetWare used to take over two hours on an average. With Red Hat Enterprise Linux v.3, the closure time was brought down to 15 minutes. Systems became more responsive with Red Hat’s 32-bit operating environment as opposed to the earlier 16-bit DOS technology running under NetWare.

With Enterprise Linux, Canara Bank could eliminate the need for purchasing separate hardware and Windows licenses for deploying ATM listeners.

According to officials at Canara Bank, “Red Hat Enterprise Linux has enabled Canara Bank to reduce infrastructure costs significantly. However, the low TCO aspect was just a small part of the overall benefits received. In Enterprise Linux, Canara Bank has found a secure, reliable platform that has delivered flexibility and choice to its infrastructure. This in turn has empowered the bank to provide affordable services to the common man.”

Canara Bank has also opted for dedicated onsite support services from Red Hat, through a 24×7 help desk manned by Red Hat Engineers. The engineers remotely log on to the IBBS servers in branches across the country and troubleshoot problems directly.

Canara Bank officials add, “The bank has been able to roll out the TBA project at a rapid pace due to the collaborative efforts of Red Hat’s Professional Services team.”

Migration is currently underway at a rapid pace and Canara Bank expects to complete the project three months before the projected date.

Future Plan

Moving from the legacy NetWare platform to Red Hat Enterprise Linux has opened up significant opportunities for Canara Bank. With networking support now available, Canara Bank is planning to deploy Red Hat Network Satellite to send updates for both IBBS as well as the operating system to all distributed machines across the country. Enterprise Linux has also made Remote Management and health monitoring of remote servers possible.

With the tremendous benefits provided by Enterprise Linux, Canara Bank plans to move its Anywhere Banking and Internet Banking listeners to the Enterprise Linux platform. Enterprise Linux has provided Canara Bank with the freedom and choice to develop a scalable growth plan, which was not possible under NetWare’s closed legacy environment.

The power of Linux is not restricted by hardware limitations, as it can run on different kinds of architectures. Canara Bank has managed to save crores of rupees in new hardware acquisition costs, by using a lightweight customized Linux distribution on its existing hardware.

Conclusion

As part of its vision of using technology to provide affordable banking services to the vast rural population of India, Canara Bank has extended the performance and cost benefits of Enterprise Linux to its customers. With a modernized branch infrastructure, Canara Bank hopes to serve customers in a timely and efficient manner, reinforcing its image of being a customer savvy bank.