Datacraft India was chosen by an Indian bank to deploy the video-conferencing solution over its network across India. The main idea behind deploying the video-conferencing solution was to cut down on travel expenses and reduce carbon footprint whilst improving productivity. The project entailed the design and integra­tion of a wide area network (WAN) based video-conferen­cing solution for the bank's nationwide network, extending from Chandigarh, Eranakulam, Kolkata to Mumbai, covering the entire country. The bank has 15 branches across the country and had to connect each and every branch to reduce the charges and save the intangible RoI.

Why WAN
On choosing WAN as the connectivity medium, AS Pillai, Head-Professional Services, Datacraft said, “Banks today have lots of regulation on data encryption and other security factors. And among various networks, WAN is the most secured one. As most of their locations already had point-to-point network, it was easy to integrate everything along with the video-conferencing solution.”

The WAN connection has been implemented on a point-to-point leased line and not on the Internet. “We chose only WAN networks and not public networks, as there is a security flaw in that. There are several government regulations on the banking environment, and one has to follow them during the connectivity process,” Pillai informed. They have also done a demo project using WAN on Internet and have solutions for that. It depends on factors like the bandwidth requirement, whether to go for Internet-based WAN, etc. Banking needs 100 percent security and cannot have Internet linked for connecting the locations.

He also said that banks are slowly moving towards MPLS-based connectivity. Normally, every branch would have a three-tier architecture, where branches are connected to their hub location, which is called as hub to spoke model. From the hub, the data would go to the core, where the servers are located. The communication between the spoke to hub and to core may be either through WAN or MPLS.

Upgradation of bandwidth
Though the bank had the video-conferencing link, the band­width was not sufficient. Datacraft went ahead with the bandwidth upgradation for video-conferencing link, and constituted the quality of service on the routers. “We have set some dedicated bandwidth for the video-conferencing due to which, at any point of time, they will have certain bandwidth while accessing the solution. The quality of service will be there and they will have the rich media effect,” Pillai claimed. The bandwidth upgradation was upgraded from 512Kbps to 2Mbps. The minimum band­width requirement for the video-conferencing solution is 384Kbps and Datacraft has set that from 768Kbps to 2Mbps.

Resources
The integration was done for around 15 branches of the bank across the country and three to four people per location were employed for the project. Datacraft spent around Rs 1.5 crore for the total deployment of the solution.

Upgradation of connectivity medium
The connectivity services are enhanced everyday and with new services being offered regularly by the SPs, are lots of scope for upgrading the video-conferencing solution through any other service. However, Pillai feels that though the bank has implemented video-conferencing solution, there are new technologies like tele presence, which are coming in and solutions like unified communications are getting more matured. “We want to integrate the entire video-conferencing solution with unified communications with which they can stay connected with a regular phone or schedule the conferences through Cisco unity. We want to integrate into a complete converged form, where a user from home could also participate in the conference,” said Pillai.

Advantages of video-conferencing “It has been proven that if used properly, video-conferencing has a dramatic effect on the way people do business. The bank understands the productivity gains derived from it-also faster decision-making will enhance service delivery and enable it to stay ahead of its competitors. The bank views video-conferen­cing as an alternative to traditional forms of communi­cations using telephone and one-on-one physical meetings, especially in a large and distri­buted geography like India,” said Sunil Manglore, GM, Datacraft India.

With video-conferencing solution, the bank is able to hold its monthly management meeting with participation from multiple locations. Besides having real-time interactivity, an additional tangible benefit is the substantial savings due to reduced travel expenses, which also contributes positively to carbon footprint reduction. The bank is committed to the environment and sees video-conferencing as a means of reducing its carbon footprint by minimising air travel.

Solutions offered
Datacraft's video-conferencing solution, which is deployed over a WAN infrastructure, uses Cisco IOS gatekeeper, Cisco IPVC-3545 and Cisco unified video-conferencing manager (CUVCM), multimedia conferen­cing system (MCS) and Tandberg endpoints. Datacraft India is responsible for product procure­ment and project management, as well as for providing administrative awareness and transfer of information to the bank's identified personnel following the project completion.

“The Datacraft team has successfully completed the deployment of the video-conferencing solution and demonstrated its commitment by ensuring on-time delivery, installation and commissioning of all equipments, software and accessories,” said Manglore.

NR SETHURAMAN
sethuramannr@cybermedia.co.in

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