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Kotak Mahindra Bank, was established in 1986. Today it has over 450 offices (including offsite branches and ATMs) and a customer base of over 6.4 million. The company was scrambling to cope up with the dizzying speeds at which it was growing. The bank and the rest of the group's companies couldn't curb mushrooming datacenters, all entwined in a sprawled network infrastructure.

With 10 datacenters and 5,000 users scattered all over   Mumbai, Sanjay Belsare, head-IT infrastructure, Kotak Mahindra Bank, and his team decided to set it all right. A nine storey, five-lakh-sq.ft. facility was setup in a suburb in Mumbai. "We consolidated the datacenters and converged the data and voice network across Kotak Mahindra Bank and other group companies," says Belsare.

Each entity continues with its existing architecture, which blends into the converged architecture Belsare deployed. Despite migration of datacenters to a single one, there was no need for different businesses to change their IP addresses and application URLs. Also, group companies can follow their own operational, compliance and regulatory processes and within a consolidated infrastructure, thereby saving costs.

But because the IT team deployed emerging, cutting-edge technologies, there were some teething issues. These were resolved by the company's internal team. "With the help of a path-breaking technologies, IT resources can be used optimally used among group companies and across different shifts, reducing real estate and power costs," says Belsare. The project cost about Rs 15 crore and went live in April this year. "We expect to achieve ROI in about 13 to 24 months," says Belsare.

Post the deployment, the group saw an increase in employee collaboration, productivity and efficiency due to wireless LAN mobility across all floors. Moving resources from one group company to the other has also become a lot easier than before. Quite obviously, the project has invigorated the IT backbone of Kotak Mahindra Bank and the other companies of the group, equipping them to cope better with business growth.