Client Situation
A leading bank faced a critical need to revamp its enterprise architecture in response to the discontinuation of IBM WebSphere Application Server (WAS) for Solaris and HP UX operating systems. With the goal of evaluating their existing technology investments, especially in IBM WAS and Oracle Solaris, the bank engaged Cedar to conduct a comprehensive enterprise architecture review. Additionally, the bank sought assistance in assessing its cloud readiness and formulating a deployment strategy.
Cedar’s Approach
Cedar took a holistic approach to address the client's challenges, involving an in-depth analysis of the bank's business, IT strategies, and architectural blueprints. The key steps undertaken included:
- Internal Assessment: Cedar developed an understanding of bank’s existing strategic priorities and next 3 years IT strategy by carrying out interviews with 40+ key bank stakeholders across three key areas:
- Applications: Evaluated the functional and application blueprint to identify pain points and conducted application fitment analysis aligned with the business strategy.
- Technology: Reviewed infrastructure architecture, disaster recovery, and server platforms, exploring alternatives like JBOSS, Tomcat, and Weblogic etc for the bank.
- Cost Optimization & Value Realization: Assessed the bank's current cost optimization framework, and reviewed IT operating and capital expenditures identifying opportunities for improvement and designing a Value Realization framework.
- External Assessment: Cedar leveraged industry insights from the IBSI knowledgebase to align the bank's strategy with industry trends, regional best practices, and service considerations to embrace an outside-in approach to address key gaps identified from the internal assessment.
- Way Forward: Cedar devised a strategic roadmap outlining critical initiatives addressing the bank's strategic priorities and cloud adoption.
Outcome
Cedar's engagement resulted in several key initiatives that aligned with the bank's objectives:
- Applications: Core banking upgrade, retirement of the Islamic core banking system for the latest generation platform and vendor consolidation, and Omni-Channel upgrade to Digital Engagement Suite for improved customer experience.
- Technology:
- Recommended the adoption of open-source JAVA App servers for improved compatibility with most hardware and operating systems.
- Identified top 30 branches with high network utilization and 6 branches with consistent low bandwidth utilization and demonstrated bandwidth rightsizing opportunities.
- Developed a migration plan for Solaris apps and defined a phase-wise cloud migration strategy based on application criticality.
- Cost Optimization: Cedar developed a cost tracking template for software and infrastructure costs. Identified gaps in the ROI template and established a Value Realization Framework. The team also analyzed top spends and associated cost levers, and identified the following optimization opportunities:
Potential Impact:- 50-70% savings by transitioning from IBM to Tomcat/JBoss.
- 30-40% savings by transitioning from Microsoft to Redhat Linux as primary OS.
- 50-60% reduction in maintenance costs by migrating databases to Open source/ Postgres SQL.
- IT Organization: Cedar realigned the organizational structure to distinguish between 'Run-the-bank' and 'Change-the-bank' operations. The team also defined the Enterprise Architecture function with a charter, governance framework, organization structure, and key roles and responsibilities.
In conclusion, Cedar's expertise enabled the bank to successfully refresh its enterprise architecture and develop a well-defined roadmap to attain its strategic priorities.