Bank

Globacom offered the industry grade Connectivity Solution to a very large bank in Nigeria , to connect all of its remote Branches to Its head office , Globacom delivered a very competitive and Cost effective Solution with best SLAs to manage and monitor its branch connectivity with Service level agreements to meet the seamless connectivity needs of the customer.

About Our Customer

This Bank is a large commercial bank, serving individuals, small and medium-sized companies, as well as large corporations and organizations. The bank maintains a vast network of interconnected branches in all Nigerian states and having multiple ATMS across the country along with a vast network of branches to meet the daily financial needs of their customers.

This bank is a unique bank with a unique philosophy. It deploys the best available ICT to maximum effectiveness, in ways that help the business cut costs and boost employee productivity with the very latest network of branches and ATM connectivity. It relies on Globacom for its core connectivity business, Internet and voice network services that touch almost every part of business across Nigeria.

Challenge

The functioning of the company’s telecommunications networks were essential to the smooth running of banking operations that extend nationally and internationally from ATM, branch offices, to Internet and mobile banking SMS and phone banking.

The bank was facing a major challenge in operating its core network due to lack of large coverage of any telecom operator of Nigeria , which have the presence in every corner of the country and bank encompassed all aspects of a network and which carries a full range of du MPLS, voice and IPTV services to all points of the business , bank was looking for a single telecom carrier which had a nationwide presence and one stop shop for providing connectivity , voice , data , internet and MPLS to its head office and branches / ATMs across all over country

Customer Requirements

The Bank wanted all its Branches in a city to be divided into clusters, and each branch within the same cluster is connecting to the Regional Hub through same service provider. They also wanted the regional Hub has connectivity to both the service providers

The regional Hub further be connected over a long haul (Clear channel or MPLS) to the bank HQ in Lagos and all the branches to communicate with each other and the Regional Hub within the same city,

The customer wanted a seamless failover between branches within the same cluster (or between clusters) in case of a node or link failure and auto-failover to another link should happen in case a link fails and should revert back to the original link once it is restored.

The Solution offered by Globacom

Globacom Solutions Design and Architect Globacom proposed point-to-multipoint Layer-2 VPN (VPLS) for Bank WAN connectivity requirements and enabled the customer to create one or two regional hubs within a state or city .They designed a unique solution where each of the Regional Hub’s and branches connected to two of the nearest feasible Globacom MPLS PoP’s.

Globacom provided dual last-mile connectivity, primary on fiber (wherever feasible) and secondary or backup on Microwave and enabled auto-failover, which was configured between the primary and secondary links

Globacom configured a VSI (Layer-2 VPN tunnel) on its MPLS network for the Bank.

The Solution have designed in such a way that VSI simulated a virtual bridge functionality on the MPLS network, enabling the branches to communicate in Any-to-Any mode directly within themselves and also to the Data Center and DR of the bank , creating a robust and redundant connectivity across all bank branches , all over Nigeria.