For the joint venture insurance company, establishing centralized and secure connectivity for branches was a challenge until it decided to adopt software-defined WAN

Set up in 2008 as a joint venture by Canara Bank, HSBC Insurance (Asia Pacific) Holdings Limited and Oriental Bank of Commerce (now merged with Punjab National Bank), the Gurugrambased Canara HSBC Oriental Bank of Commerce Life Insurance has over 40 branch offices across India.

While planning for expansion – new, smaller branches – it became evident that the traditional setup could prove a challenge in terms of management and control, particularly since the organization intended to establish central and secure connectivity using the available low-cost public network with an enterprise-level security component.

“This was also well-timed for us as we were also planning to do away with the old network infrastructure and wanted to leapfrog to adopt the latest in networking technology,” Sachin Dutta, Chief Operating Officer, Canara HSBC Oriental Bank of Commerce Life Insurance said.

With their rigor to drive quicker delivery of secure, scalable, stable network environment at new locations, the company planned to migrate to the next-generation network by implementing SD-WAN and SD-LAN in the working environment.

“As we embarked on our journey to refresh the old network devices, we evaluated the market, measured business growth plans and consulted various partners in this space. We reviewed the challenges of setting these branches in a traditional way and found that the cost incurred and time required on setting up these branches was very high,” he explained.

According to Dutta, while traditional MPLS setups guaranteed uptime and limited packet drop, it required more time for setup and there was a clear disadvantage in terms of cost and flexibility. Maintenance and change management also acted as a roadblock at times.

“We had the option of continuing and refreshing the traditional network with the set of new devices, but we 16 www.dqindia.com

Key Learning dropped the idea and decided to actively pursue SDWAN because of its flexibility, scalability and activation,” he stated.

Canara HSBC Oriental Bank of Commerce Life Insurance initiated the project in November 2019 and completed it in over five months, in March 2020.

ROLLING IT OUT

The process began with the partner selection process – review of solution design, implementation timelines, and post-production management of the environment. This also included a review of industry-leading solution with a strong implementation experience. The team also consulted partners and industry counterparts who had already adopted SD-WAN and had been reaping the benefits.

“We initiated the deployment with the network design and planning phase, under which we reviewed the existing WAN and LAN setup and deployment of the central environment. This was followed by the deployment at the branches,” Dutta stated.