TJSB Sahakari Bank goes the VDI way

With expansion and increasing growth, TJSB Sahakari Bank needed a scalable solution to better manage its existing desktops. Here’s how the bank went through a VDI journey without any glitches and procured benefits for itself. By Jasmine Desai 

TJSB Sahakari Bank, a leading multi-state scheduled co-operative bank, set out to differentiate itself with the adoption of desktop virtualization. Growth and expansion proved to be a catalyst for VDI adoption. It had shifted into a head office of 33,000 square feet. The number of desktops in the bank was set to go from a hundred to 350.

Subodh Nagwekar, CIO, TJSB Sahakari Bank, was quick to anticipate the challenges that lay ahead. With an increase in the number of desktops, data security, maintenance, application loading and backup would all pose challenges for the IT team. The bank had dedicated engineers to handle the maintenance of its existing desktops. Additional desktops meant that the number of engineers also had to go up.

“We realized that the time had come to look for a solution that could address all of our pain points. The need of the hour was to deploy a solution that not only made it easier for us to manage and maintain the desktops and was scalable,” said Nagwekar. The bank was looking for a solution that could meet all of its requirements, largely that of centralized management. TJSB zeroed in on Citrix XenDesktop.

The bank has deployed HP C7000 Blade Chassis and Dual Processor Blade Servers with 96 GB RAM. There are three primary hosts on which Citrix XenApp is installed. All the floors of the head office are interlinked with a fiber backbone and gigabit switches. Over 100 desktops at the HO were migrated to Citrix XenDesktop running on Wyse Thin Clients. After the deployment at the head office, TJSB Sahakari Bank is deploying desktop virtualization at its branches. The applications running on the thin clients include Core Banking, file & print, Intranet, Anti Money Laundering and Loan Origination.

The Citrix team worked closely with Nagwekar, who said, “They discussed and demonstrated the Proof of Concept (POC) to us and conducted an on-premise POC for 15 days.”

Magnamious, a Citrix partner, executed this order. The thin client with browser has helped ensure that the bank saved on software licensing costs. The bank was also able to resize its UPS and reduce power consumption. There has also been significant process improvement.

The deployment of desktop virtualization has brought with numerous benefits. The foremost being improved overall efficiency by over 40%. “Data is centralized and backups are taken centrally ensuring that no data is lost. This has minimized the outflow of information from the thin clients,” commented Nagwekar.

Thanks to the deployment, the bank has been able to install one network printer per floor, instead of a printer for each department. This printer is connected to the Citrix server bringing down printing costs by 40-60%.

TJSB Sahakari Bank has put physical and logical controls and effective information security policies in place. The network and systems are hardened and they are regularly patched and updated as per the advice of the vendors. A qualified and certified agency also does regular audits and VAPT on the system as an extra precaution.

Nagwekar concluded, “We will continue to grow at a fast pace by steadily opening new branches. As mobile users are increasing, we are equipping employees with mobile devices, which would be connected to Citrix. Plans are in place to ramp up our branches from the existing 63 to 100 over the next two years.”