Cedar assists a leading bank in Kuwait in optimizing infrastructure & defining the way forward

Client Situation

Our client is a leading bank in Kuwait with an asset size of around USD 19 Billion. The bank provides a wide range of services across consumer banking, wholesale banking, treasury, and financial services. The bank has a network of around 52 branches and over 300 ATMs. The client was undergoing multiple transformation programs across different applications such as channel, core banking, treasury, ATMs, Call centres etc. Cedar was mandated by the client to review the current infrastructure and assess the additional requirements across hardware, database, storage, application servers & web servers.

Cedar’s Approach

Cedar used 2 step approach to assessing the current infrastructure & technology components available with the bank

1. Current State Assessment:
   1. Reviewed the existing hardware, utilization, applications running on the specific hardware across the date of procurement, End of Life/ End of Service, Procurement Costs, AMC’s being paid
   2. Reviewed the existing licenses across Oracle & MSSQL databases, Applications & Web servers available
   3. Identified applications being replaced as part of the transformation initiatives.
   4. Review of the existing high availability setup
2. Infrastructure Requirement Review:
   1. Reviewed the infrastructure requirements across Intel & RISC based processors as provided by the suppliers for the transformation.
   2. Ensured & enabled alignment of the supplier sizing provided in accordance with the industry best practices.

Outcome

The program resulted in the optimization of existing infrastructure & licensing components along with defining the way forward procurement plans.

1. Developed target principles for the way forward infrastructure strategy of the bank across Production & disaster recovery setup along with high availability options.
2. Determined infrastructure components & licensing components which would be reused once applications were sunset.
3. Developed multiple way forward options along with a cost implication & analysis across hardware, storage & licensing.
4. Developed a procurement plan aligned to the overall implementation of the transformation initiatives.