Enterprise Apps Special: Network Management Case

Network management: Brain behind HDFC’s network

It’s not easy to manage the systems and processes of a company with operations in over 170 locations. But HDFC’s experience shows that an intelligently architected and designed communication network can make even tough tasks seem simple, says Rahul Neel Mani

Housing Development Finance Corporation (HDFC) has become a name synonymous with making millions of dreams come true by simplifying the process of buying a house. During the past decade, HDFC has nurtured the development of the Indian housing finance industry by promoting housing finance institutions in partnership with banks and private sector non-banking financial institutions.

Incorporated in 1977, HDFC has since emerged as the largest residential mortgage financial institution in India. “One of HDFC’s main objectives is to increase the flow of resources for housing through the integration of housing finance institutions with the domestic capital market,” says R Arivazhagan, general manager–Information Technology, HDFC. The underlying doctrine and management philosophy of the company is ‘purpose-process-people’. This approach has enabled HDFC to cue in on existing business realities and accordingly craft proactive strategies to fully realise underlying customer needs.

All this has become possible with the help of an intelligently architected and designed state-of-the-art data and communication network—a network so huge, widespread and diverse that it needs perpetual and uninterrupted monitoring-cum-management. To take care of the critical needs of a diverse network, the company introduced network management software (NMS).

HDFC’s network

HDFC is spread across the length and breadth of India with a presence in over 170 locations in 115 cities and towns. Of these locations, 19 major cities (regional hubs) are branch offices while the rest are service centres. There are nearly 400 users at the head office at Ramon House in Mumbai. Branch offices have somewhere between 40-60 users and service centres have users ranging between two to 15 people depending on specific local needs. The HDFC Wide Area Network (WAN) is connected through a mixture of 2 Mbps and 64 Kbps leased lines with ISDN and VPN providing the back-up in case of link failure. “The campus Local Area Network (LAN) is all standardised on Cat5E/6 Switched Ethernet and is the same across all offices,” says Arivazhagan.

HDFC has also standardised its routing and switching hardware and Cisco is the vendor of choice. In the core routing space HDFC uses the Cisco 3660 router. The core switch is the Cisco 4506 Layer 3 switch. At the access layer the company is using Cisco Catalyst 2950. HDFC’s regional locations are connected through the Cisco 2620 series of routers whereas at the service centres the company deployed Cisco 1700/800 series routers.

In terms of servers, HDFC has been using the HP 530 Proliant server (clustering in Windows 2000 Advanced Server) and VMS Alpha server (Digital).

Need to manage IT services

HDFC’s main objective is to increase the flow of resources for housing through the integration of housing finance institutions with the domestic capital market, says R Arivazhagan

Says Arivazhagan, “HDFC has a huge network and managing it was never a cakewalk for us. But it is this widespread network that provides us a business edge over our competitors.” As a leader in this business domain, HDFC recognised the need for an efficient, reliable and end-to-end IT solution that could manage its large IT set-up. A network management tool was required primarily for the following reasons:

• To manage the ever increasing size of HDFC’s network.
• For efficient and proactive management of the network centrally from the company’s head office in Mumbai.
• Because of increased reliance of the business on the network and applications accessed on the network.

Both in terms of efficient usage of bandwidth, traffic monitoring and network uptime, it was felt that the company cannot do much without a solid network management tool.

“Thus we thought of using a complete NMS tool that could give us both network management and monitoring sitting at a central place. That’s how we decided to implement HP OpenView network management software,” says Arivazhagan.

But even before using HP OpenView, HDFC had been using freeware tools and tools from other bundled packages to manage its IT network. “Before HP OpenView, we used to work on a reactive mode/using freeware tools. First we used to get to know of network outage only when some location would call in to report a problem. Even then, it would be a very resource-intensive exercise to isolate and resolve the issues based on the complaints logged with the central office,” says Arivazhagan.

Though the tools used were low-cost tools they fell severely short of being a proper NMS. In addition, they could not cope with expansion and changing business paradigms. “Our business operations are inextricably linked to efficient, proactive and responsive IT services. It has to strictly adhere to the competitive tenet of today’s operating environment for business continuance and enhanced productivity,” he says.

As Arivazhagan mentions, the company was simply not interested in a generic enterprise- wide management tool, but a network management tool that could match with the growing needs of HDFC, and which was scalable, reliable and easy to deploy.

Why HP OpenView?

Arivazhagan says that there were very valid reasons why HDFC chose HP OpenView. He lists the 10 most important prerequisites to deploy a NMS solution as follows:

• It should have a modular design, which enables the company to make investments in a phased manner and justify RoI before starting off on a new project.
• It should enable discovering and mapping the network automatically.
• It should be able to work on open standards so that it can integrate easily with other solutions that HDFC had deployed, including Cisco Works.
• It should have user-friendly graphical interface, which is intuitive enough for any operations staff to work on it.
• It must provide event correlation service, which helps in better problem resolution across HDFC’s IT infrastructure.
• It should provide an automatic status update on the map and alerts/e-mail/pop-ups, etc, for events.
• It should allow for SNMP data collection and graphing.
• It should support data warehousing.
• It should also have a Web-based user interface, and,
• It should offer reporting facilities.

“Other parameters such as breadth of functionality, architecture specifics, performance characteristics and RoI were also considered before we finally zeroed in on HP OpenView as the standard network management tool for HDFC’s corporate IT set-up,” says Arivazhagan.

Deployment process

The deployment and roll-out phases were seamless and in accordance with blueprint expectations. With WAN management being completely outsourced, it meant freeing up HDFC’s human resources from personalised and dedicated attention to HDFC’s business critical network. The implementation process started with understanding the complexity and criticality of the network. “We first designed the IP addressing schemes and did the environment analysis and requirement specifications. It was followed by the enabling of routing protocols on all the 120 routers across the organisation,” says Arivazhagan. Enabling SNMP on all routers and servers followed this process. All the IP addresses were changed according to the new proposed scheme and then the server sizing was planned, followed by the procurement of servers.

“Firstly, all the branches were mapped for the flow of operations. Then the IT implementation team had to synchronise all operations, work on the whole architecture and applications and customise specific functionalities according to the requirements of the company,” says Arivazhagan.

The benefits

Now almost all links across the country are being monitored using the HP OpenView NMS. It has given HDFC effective control and monitoring capabilities to address outages or capacity utilisation of IT resources.

“The HP OpenView Network Node Manager provides HDFC the much required network view for easy problem identification, faster isolation of faults and proactive corrective action/resolution,” says Arivazhagan.

A central network management software was very much required to keep the company ahead of competition. Undoubtedly, implementing the NMS solution has been extremely beneficial to HDFC’s business operations. “Our current expensive IT networks are running on a higher degree of availability, ensuring business continuity,” he says.

The road ahead

The next frontiers in IT infrastructure are being ushered in through the concept of IT service management. Based on ITIL methodology, HDFC is now planning to implement further solutions to help it deliver IT as a service to its users. These solutions will help create platforms for application management, helpdesk and other processes within service management. “HP OpenView NNM version will be upgraded to the latest version and also other tools in OpenView suite such as Service Desk and IT Operations are being currently evaluated. If we are convinced, then we will go and implement them,” says Arivazhagan.

rahul@expresscomputeronline.com