A leading cooperative bank in India puts an end to IT woes

Owing to its traditional IT infrastructure that had gone obsolete overtime, The Bhavasara Kshatriya Co-op. Bank Ltd., Bengaluru was inundated with issues related to maintenance of slow machines, management of financial data, information security and preparedness against virus attacks. NComputing provided the bank with an affordable computing alternative, while enabling them to have a unified view of operations.

The Bhavasara Kshatriya Co-operative Bank Limited (BKCB) was established in Bengaluru, Karnataka, India, on 13th March 1916 as a co-operative society with an initial share capital of just INR 813.00 from 30 members. It was converted to a co-operative bank in 1966 with the aim to serve the poor and middle class people and enable them to have a better future. The bank currently has its head office and three more branches situated in Bengaluru that cater to over 150,000 customers.

Challenges that called for a lasting solution

The BKCB is a technology savvy financial institution and was computerised in the year 1996. The bank also implemented core banking solution to automate its banking operations in May 2012. Overtime, as the BKCB’s IT set up (which mainly comprised traditional PCs) became obsolete, it started affecting the bank’s operations. “We were facing problems like—frequent downtimes and wear and tear, slow machines resulting in slow operations, cumbersome management of individual PCs, virus threats and issues related to data security. It is at this stage that we sought to deploy an agile technology that addressed these challenges, squarely,” shared Mr Gopinath TK, Head-IT, The Bhavasara Kshatriya Co–op. Bank Ltd.

After evaluating many computing solutions, including a couple of thin client options, the bank selected NComputing’s L300 for vSpace—an affordable and energy-efficient desktop and application virtualization solution that fitted BKCB’s requirements like a glove. “For a period of 3 months, we tested the NComputing solution for its effectiveness, fitment and compatibility in a Wide Area Network (WAN) environment with—different operating systems, several browser applications, laser and dot matrix printers, and other devices. Once we were satisfied on all accounts, we deployed 10 seats of L300 virtual desktops during the first phase of deployment. In the next 3-4 months, we further added 35 NComputing seats and replaced our obsolete IT infrastructure across all four locations,” said Mr Gopinath TK.

IT can’t get any better!

Currently, all four BKCB locations, comprising the Head office and three branch offices, have NComputing powered workstations. Mr Gopinath TK enumerates the RoI that the bank is recording on the NComputing deployment:

• “The solution is easy to deploy and manage.
• “It is easy to monitor each user’s activity, control access to applications and ensure data security.
• “There are virtually no failures or downtimes.
• “NComputing devices have extremely low foot print when it comes to energy consumption. We are observing significant reduction in power consumption and backup costs. So much so, we have reduced UPS size from 6kVA to 3kVA at each branch.

“Other banks are amazed to see the quick and cost-effective manner in which we have successfully revamped our computing infrastructure by deploying NComputing. Now, for the IT team at BKCB, IT infrastructure expansion means NComputing, and NComputing means end of IT worries!” he concluded.