Download New services call for new financial networks TextStart With China`s

New services call for new financial networks
TextStart
With China's economy growing rapidly, financial services have begun permeating
every aspect of society, making ubiquitous finance an inevitable trend. Ubiquitous
finance, in turn, requires a ubiquitous network that connects bank service terminals
such as outlets, branches, self-service banks, and POSs with data centers, featuring
wide and high-density coverage without any blind spots.
Bottlenecks facing financial businesses
At present, each of China's provinces has its own ubiquitous financial network to
enable ubiquitous coverage. This is in the form of a tier-2 interconnected financial
network that consists of three parts: a tier-2 backbone network, a tier-1 branch LAN,
and an intra-city access network. It was designed to provide always-on connectivity
using efficient, secure, and reliable high-bandwidth bearing capabilities, so as to ensure
banks were able to provide quality services 24/7. However, the traditional tier-2
network has not been able to keep up with the surge in development of new banking
services in recent years, and this is due to four main reasons:
First, the legacy network lacks the bandwidth and reliability that is required by
businesses. Nowadays, new services like auditing system, videoconferencing, video
surveillance, E-learning, and unified communication are being increasingly widely
used. In particular, videoconferencing and video-surveillance services call for higher
bandwidth and stronger network performance in areas like fault recovery, which the
existing network is incapable of achieving.
Second, the legacy network lacks multi-service bearing capability to guarantee
for key services. As bank services mushroom, multi-service bearing capability is a
must for the network, as it guarantees delivery of key services over convergent IP
network. This is particularly true for real-time services like deposits, videoconferencing,
and voice services, which require high-quality bearing resources.
Third, as bank outlets are widely distributed, it is getting more difficult to access
outlets and manage the network. Outlets are the most important service channels of
a bank, as they reflect its core competence. Statistics show that even users of online
banking services require services from traditional bank outlets at the same time. With
rapid economic development, banks are setting up more and more outlets to offer
increasingly complex services. Moreover, as outlets are widely scattered, access
technologies vary widely from outlet to outlet. These increase the complexity of
network management. To cope with the rapid development of outlets, the network must
be capable of ubiquitous access and remote management.
Lastly, traditional private networks urgently require an upgrade. In order to
connect branches, sub-branches, and business outlets to their data centers, banks used
to lease a considerable number of ATM and SDH-based private lines from operators.
As technology advances, telecom operators have moved away from massive private
network construction, which means these private lines will soon be phased out. For this
reason, many banks are beginning or planning to replace their private lines to sustain
the expansion and development of their banking services in the long run.
Building a green, ubiquitous network
To help financial businesses address these challenges and build provincial financial
networks with ubiquitous coverage, Huawei has unveiled a tier-2 financial
interconnected network solution, leveraging its profound understanding of the telecom
industry and deep insight into banking networks over the past two decades. Comprising
a tier-2 backbone, a branch LAN, and intra-city access, the solution aims to provide
banks with a provincial financial network platform that is always on, efficient, secure,
reliable, and capable of providing superior financial services wherever needed.
A green pipeline: Tier-2 backbone solution
The tier-2 backbone network realizes interconnection between tier-2 and tier-1 bank
branches. It leverages a range of technologies including IP, MPLS, SDH, MSTP, and
WDM, to offer a ubiquitous high-bandwidth, secure, and reliable pipeline.
It provides multi-service bearing capabilities with higher bearing efficiency using VPN
and MPLS HQoS technologies; through visualized O&M network management and
end-to-end energy-saving technologies, the solution also improves network
management efficiency while consuming less energy. With the new solution, hurdles
plaguing the traditional tier-2 backbone network such as bandwidth shortage,
unreliability, low multi-service bearing capacity, and challenges posed by the
replacement and upgrading of private lines, are all cleared.
Convergent network: Branch LAN solution
A branch LAN offers convergence and access to user terminals and server clusters
inside the branch office building. The solution provides an optimized combination of
the following technologies: trunking, link aggregation, QoS, NAC, POE/POE+,
firewall, load balancing, Netstream, convergent management, and muting. Financial
businesses can utilize this solution to build a quiet and eco-friendly LAN that integrates
convergent structure, access, bearing, service provisioning, and management
capabilities with a compact structure, enhanced bandwidth and reliability and reduced
carbon footprint.
One-stop management: Intra-city access solution
Huawei's intra-city access solution offers one-stop intra-city outlet and branch network
construction, management, and maintenance. Equipping financial businesses with
one-stop access, power supply, security, and remote network management capabilities,
this solution helps improve access bandwidth and security for outlets significantly, and
simplifies the network structure for outlet and branch networks. Its remote management
feature can considerably improve the O&M efficiency of outlet networks and shorten
service downtime caused by network failures. As such, the solution helps financial
businesses rise to the challenges presented by the growing outlet base and service
portfolio, making ubiquitous banking possible.
Making financial services ubiquitous
Among the many businesses that are moving to upgrade their private lines, Agricultural
Bank of China is the one that has taken the lead by upgrading its private lines to MSTP
private lines, which are currently widely used in its outlets.
The bank ranks top among the four major state-owned banks in China in terms of the
most extensive coverage of outlets and most branches. Due to expanding business and
surging bandwidth demand from its outlets, the bank was under pressure to upgrade its
legacy private line to an MSTP-based line that provided higher bandwidth and
simplified interconnectivity.
Huawei's high-end switches and routers, with a proven track record of reliable
performance and stable operation during a trial run by the bank, were praised by ABC
for their compatibility, switching, and Layer 3 routing. Successfully passing various
tests by the bank's head office and tier-1 branches, Huawei won the bank's bid to assist
with upgrading its tier-2 backbone and outlet access network.
Featuring large capacity and wire speed forwarding, high density, and strong scalability
as well as powerful service capabilities, the solution fully met the bank's core business
requirements, and is helping to drive its rapid growth.
"In addition to offering high-quality products, Huawei is committed to providing
customized quality services and solutions for enterprises," says Li Weishi, head of
Enterprise Network Product Line of Datacom at Huawei. Backed by more than two
decades of experience in the telecom field, Huawei is striving with great efforts to help
financial businesses serve clients wherever needed by offering them a green,
competitive, and ubiquitous tier-2 customized platform.
TextEnd