IBM Daksh : Virtual Success

Given the rate at which IBM Daksh has grown over the years, there can be

little doubt regarding the problems or issues that came in the way of the

organization. Of these issues, perhaps the most significant one was that of

achieving some sort of network synchronization across various locations.

According to S Gopalakrishnan, vice president, Technology, IBM Daksh Business

Process Services, As IBM Daksh grew significantly over the years, the

organization required scalability and flexibility in its technology platform

across all delivery centers so that it would enable easy and seamless

implementation of any type of customer contract or technology solution,

regardless of the geographic location.

There were a few things in this case that posed a huge challenge to the

company. The primary one was something called the network habits of customers.

Every customer operates and accesses his network in a different way. Thus a

synchronization had to be achieved between the customers technology and the

companys technology, observes Gopalakrishnan.

Thus IBM Daksh sought to find the most apt way by which the company could

standardize the way every customer connects to the network. The solution was a

fully virtualized network service delivery across all service delivery

locations. The virtualization drive has yielded tremendous results, though it

was not devoid of challenges.

What existed earlier was a point to point delivery network. This complex

implementation changed that and connected various delivery locations in a cloud.

This helped them not only in strengthening their delivery processes but also in

transmitting real time services. Says Gopalakrishnan, Unlike other industries,

such as manufacturing or FMCG, the ITeS industry has the unique requirement that

networks need to transmit voice and data in real time. Furthermore, the

industrys unique delivery SLAs imply that there is a very low tolerance for

even momentary glitches. The system also needs to be resilient and robust enough

to support the on-boarding of a multitude of customers and their unique

individual requirements for connectivity and SLAs. Moreover, the high volume of

Personally Identifiable Information (PII) of end customers that the industry

handles on a regular basis necessitates the integration of high-end, and

impregnable security mechanisms.

All these standards are not only complex but also require tremendous effort

to be inculcated in one system. But that is what the ATM network has managed to

achieve for IBM Daksh. The fully-meshed Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) network

developed at IBM Daksh provides virtual voice and data connectivity for each

client while simultaneously meeting all unique security, interoperability, and

SLA requirements for different clients. This single virtualized network also

meets all business requirements to service the flexibility required by both the

end customer as well as IBM across all geographies. In addition, the virtual

network provides built-in business continuity empowerment through seamless

availability of all services at an alternate location via no more than managed

configuration changes.

The network is also designed with built-in scalability and interoperability

with other ATM networks, data networking devices, different versions of Private

Branch Exchange (PBX). It also takes into account technology developments, such

as Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), without making further investments.

According to Gopalakrishnan, this network solution has helped them on various

fronts and added key differentiators to their business like flexibility,

adaptability, reliabilitym, security and speed of deployment.

The network also delivered some tangible results like achievement of high

up-time for all clients, SLA commitments on packet loss and latency parameters,

flexibility in ramp-up and ramp-down, etal. And all this was made possible

within a span of eleven months.

Mehak Chawla



mehakc@cybermedia.co.in