Banks have been rapidly journeying towards the cloud, with some large ones such as Yes Bank are banking big time on shift towards the new norm of computing.Yes Bank’s cloud strategy has been focussed on three key pillars: On Demand scalability aligned to growth, agility to recover from failure, and drive security standardization across infrastructure.
The bank works with multiple cloud service providers. According to Mahesh Ramamoorthy, CIO, Yes Bank, there are many efficiency gains that have been realised viz. cost reduction on a sustainable basis, elasticity of computer hardware, On-Demand scalability, automated recovery and deployment of cloud native development management tools.
“The technology benefits include usage of next-gen capabilities like Kubernetes, Red Open shift, Data bricks and PaaS services. Embracing cloud as a workload management strategy is an important step to move towards the App Modernisation framework,” said Ramamoorthy.
This also aligns to the Bank’s strategy to shift focus i.e., move from an API led approach to an API first capability.
At Yes Bank, the selection of workload management is decided on various application performance criteria viz. whether an application is process intensive or data exchange intensive, in addition to the sensitivity and criticality of the data stored and transmitted.
The bank’s technology and information security strategy provides guidance on the applications and the associated data that needs to be hosted on cloud.
“In the long-term, we’d like to work towards application modernization and build an environment that is natively capable of using cloud enabled services such as scalability (Auto Scale), DR and replication through high levels of automation,” he added.
For assessing and selecting the cloud provider, Yes Bank considers several factors which include the availability of Datacentres within the country, data security, multi-mode connectivity with On-premises data Data Recovery Process (DR & Backup), high levels of automation, compliance to local regulators and international compliance organisation.
Many times, poor multicloud management becomes a key reason for organisations to bear unwanted expenses. To effectively manage multiple clouds, monitoring and ensuring regular checks and updates are one of the ways that the bank manages the multi-cloud infrastructure better. “For instance, key features such as Scalability (Auto Scale), DR Availability on a need basis, Local HA (High Availability) for Critical Applications are regularly used and monitored. Additionally, the cloud advisory and reservation of resources along with the removal of unwanted resources is frequently reviewed,” Ramamoorthy maintained.
In a world where businesses today offer 24×7 services to the customers through digital mediums, there is no window for taking backups as there can be no downtime. According to Ramamoorthy, technology leaders can reduce backup time and even restore time by adopting an online backup strategy as well as building a highly effective resilient environment that enables ‘zero’ downtime based architecture. Data management is integral to driving success to the cloud adoption and execution.
Focussed on high availability, the Mumbai headquartered private lender is also on its path to build a tiered resilience across its infrastructure with a multi-city footprint.
Ramamoorthy believes this helps reduce the risks of geographical concentration and ensures effective utilization of Data Centre space, thereby enabling a better Near Disaster Recovery strategy for critical applications.
