The Hindu Business Line : Managing data the smart way

For rapidly expanding enterprises in the banking and financial services , telecom, manufacturing and retail verticals, managing increasing data flow has become a key technology infrastructure issue.

For, database is the underlying foundation for business applications, be it for core banking or enterprise resource planning (ERP) or customer relationship management (CRM).

Oracle Corporation provides insights into how database management is being handled by Indian companies.

According to S.P.S. Grover, Vice-President, Technology Sales, Oracle India, market trends point towards an increasing number of Indian enterprises taking to Real Application Clusters (RACs) and Grid computing technologies.

To put it simply, real application clusters allow a database to be installed across multiple servers in an IT infrastructure. The clustering technology distributes transaction processing across several servers.

Grid computing offers an opportunity to improve existing IT infrastructures while lowering costs. Oracle's grid infrastructure, says the company, pools IT resources into a single virtual computer that analyses demand and adjusts supply accordingly.

For more on these concepts, here are excerpts from a chat eWorld had with Grover:

What challenges are enterprises facing in managing large databases?

Data or information has become one of the most valuable assets for an organisation to facilitate decision-making and comply with various regulatory requirements. Businesses are highly dependent on information technology for day-to-day operational and strategic decisions as they churn out huge volumes of operational data every hour.

This applies to all organisations whether they are small, medium or large. In order to manage and maintain their information, companies need a reliable, scalable and flexible IT infrastructure. This is where databases play a critical role.

How are companies addressing this need?

Enterprises are evaluating low-cost computing options to address this business imperative. India witnessed one of the sharpest increases in grid adoption, according to the Oracle Grid Index IV report released in August 2006. At a 38 per cent increase, the high grid adoption rate implies the readiness and maturity of Indian enterprises to invest in modern, flexible and dynamic information technology infrastructure.

What role is Oracle playing in this space?

Going by the commercial success of enterprises adopting grid-computing technology, we feel that mainstream business is getting more comfortable and technology savvy.

Oracle is taking initiatives to make the grid popular in the Indian market. We are working with customers as well as local Independent Software vendors (ISVs) and large system integrators (SI) in India to enable them on grid.

Our channel partners are also playing an important role in educating customers on the benefits of this technology.

Compliance-related issues and the need for storage have added to the technology challenge and complexity?

It's not only the need for storage or storage management.

It's the need to generate, protect, share and manage that data effectively so as to enable businesses to meet compliance norms, and become successful.

How does Business Intelligence (BI) application fit into the real application cluster space?

BI, in the form of data warehousing, can consolidate and organise data so it can be easily managed, accessed, and analysed.

Sectors that have shown interest in these applications...

Grid computing techniques can allow organisations to align their computing resources with the priorities of their business. Some sectors that have shown interest and which would benefit from grid computing technology are telecom, financial services, travel, construction and engineering, media and utilities and retail.

The Indian retail and telecom companies will benefit by adopting grid-computing techniques. Indian organisations have become part of a complex global supply chain. Their profitability depends on innovative use of information technology.

Bringing it all together

Saraswat Bank is one of the largest cooperative banks in Asia, with 75 branches in five States across India and partnerships with more than 118 banks in 43 countries. The bank felt the need to bring together multiple channels into an integrated business management platform, ensuring security and 24/7 operation for its core banking application.

It went in for Oracle Database 10g and RAC (Real Application Cluster) solutions and rolled out the new platform to 75 branches in one month.

This, says the bank, enabled it to successfully continue transacting within 15 hours of torrential flooding, when other institutions were out of operation for up to three days.

Consolidating disparate systems onto a single, centralised platform has resulted in cutting daily closing time by automating manual processes, improved productivity and facilitated 50 per cent of its financial workforce to be redeployed on higher-value tasks, says the bank.

According to Samir K. Banerji, Managing Director of Saraswat Bank, "the centralised core banking application we run on Oracle has enabled savings, which means we can redeploy people in marketing, recoveries and sales, areas where they can improve our operations instead of incurring costs."

Oracle has also helped the National Stock Exchange (NSE) to manage large volumes of data.

Muralidharan, Senior Vice-President, National Stock Exchange, says, "NSE is the third largest exchange in the world. When we started, we were doing 24,000 transactions. Today we are doing 3 million transactions. The challenge today is that volumes are growing and the time window available to crunch the data is small. One way of doing it is to put additional hardware and keep on expanding hardware to do the time crunch. The other way is to have a software solution. That is when we looked at real application clusters and grid. We implemented RAC and whatever resources were available during the trading hours were put to use during the trading also. So what was earlier taking us six hours now takes us two to two-and-a-half hours. The benefit is that it makes our information available at multiple places online, and it makes the data available to the member online."

vrishi@thehindu.co.in