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Shrikant S. Bapat

In today's IT-based banking scenario, it's vital to ensure networks don't break down. And this calls for the right power solutions.

NO business network can remain isolated or proprietary in the current economic scenario and more so banks, which are typically enterprise-wide organisations that rely on inter-dependent networks. It is perhaps this feature of banks that makes the relationship between IT and banking fundamentally symbiotic. In the banking sector, IT can reduce costs, increase volumes and facilitate customised products; similarly, IT requires banking and financial services to facilitate its growth. Within the banking industry, the payment system is perhaps the most important mechanism through which such interactive dynamics gets manifested.

Here's a scenario. While you're on holiday in London, you pay for a meal with your visa card. You bank with the State Bank of India in Mumbai while the restaurant owner banks with Barclays. Once your card is swiped, an automated phone call is placed and SBI confirms to Barclays over an international communications network that you can afford to honour the bill. The transaction in pound sterling is authorised. All of this of course takes no more than two to three minutes. Later that day, SBI settles with Barclays and Visa gets its cut. You get served a bill at the end of your holiday, which conveniently is delivered straight to your doorstep. This scenario is played out every day, billions of times over. Now imagine a scenario where something goes wrong.

The convergence of computing and communication networks may have multiplied the capability of banks but not without a direct increase in the complexity of the network. The swiping of the credit card triggers a long and complex process. And all of the process has to work perfectly, or none of it will work at all.

The business of credit where billions of dollars exchange hands every single day is totally dependant on the health of the equipment powering its transactions, the infrastructure powering the equipment that processes these transactions and finally the networks that deliver them. It follows that uptime of primary business systems is paramount and IT failure is simply not an option. But is 100 per cent reliability truly achievable?

Unfortunately enough nothing can ever be 100 per cent fail-safe. But because credit card companies have calculated the cost of downtime for even an hour to accumulate to losses anywhere between$60 million and $1 billion, they build their network such that when things fail the whole system does not come to a grinding halt.

In all fairness, I am sure not many of us have faced network downtime problems while getting our credit cards swiped, so the question that then arises is whether network uptime is a given within the banking and financial services community? Sadly, the answer is no.

As per a recently concluded study by MAIT and Feedback Consulting, network downtime costs to the Indian economy have been estimated to accrue to as much as Rs 20,000 crore per annum. Over 30 per cent of this is a direct result of network downtime to the Banking & Finance industry, which translates into Rs 6,000 crore per annum from this segment alone. Shocking but true.

Banking today is not about where the branch is but where the customer is. Until a few years back, banks could position their automated teller machines (ATMs) as a unique selling proposition, but ATMs have become commoditised now. Today banks are looking at increasing the number of ATMs to both enhance customer service (24x7 transaction availability) and also access remote locations where setting a branch office may not be economically viable. The total installed ATM base in the country is about 4,500. The total cash movement through ATMs in India is between Rs 35,000 crore and Rs 40,000 crore every year, with an average per cash transaction in the range of Rs 1,300 to Rs 1,400.

With increasing use of delivery channels such as ATMs, Internet banking, telephone and mobile banking, access to servers round the clock is critical and 24x7x365 connectivity paramount. Given the nature of the business, banks are one of the more sophisticated users of power equipment. However, what is lacking is an understanding of customising and designing a complete network uptime solution. There are two basic premises for every network uptime solution: one is to certainly minimise the number of events that occur, and the second is that even if some failure in the network does occur, to keep this transparent to the customer base. Enter the need for Application Uptime Management... continuous availability providing expanded user access to application services (24x7 or near 24x7), despite unscheduled incidents.

The first question to arise with respect to network uptime solutions is what the costs are. What companies need to asses while attempting to calculate costs is the `network criticality', the relative cost of downtime of one hour, on their business and customer service levels. There are different kinds of solutions configured around uptime products for differing levels of network criticality. For example, an ATM in a heavy footfall area should ideally never be down at all, even for preventive maintenance. The cost of uptime solutions should be viewed in the light of cost of downtime, and not as items for saving capital expenditure.

In most cases, power equipment procurement costs are approximately five percent of an enterprise's overall IT budget. Whatever the costs may be, the one sure thing is, that they are just a fraction of the cost of network downtime — not only do processes come to a halt but companies lose a lot of manpower, man-hours and most importantly a negative experience can lead to loss of goodwill and maybe even loss of that customer.

However, in most cases, organisations try to save money on this small percentage of the total package and end up with a badly planned power solution. Another reason why uptime, or availability, is not top of mind when investment decisions are being made is because companies want the first-mover advantage, so speed is of the essence. The catastrophic cost of network downtime, vis-à-vis manual or unconnected systems, is not fully understood, leading to inadequate understanding of how uptime can be designed into a network.

A professionally designed and installed power supply solution definitely minimises any snag. Businesses must come around to appreciating that small steps taken at the initial stage of any project ensure minimal downtime, resulting in enhanced application performance. This leads to customer satisfaction and increase in Business and Profitability. The classic management advice holds good here: "A chain is as strong as its weakest link; a weak link in the power solution determines the strength of the chain." Subsequently, it is the strength of the total communications system. Don't let the chain break here.

The author is Country Champion — Uptime Solutions, Emerson Network Power (India) Pvt Ltd.

Picture by K. Ramesh Babu

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