Casestudies

Provide a turnkey solution for accessing banking application securely for the remote branches across country

Project Overview:

As part of the financial sector strengthening project, the bank has embarked in to a modernizing effort of its information technology infrastructure and automization of its various financial transactions to support all banking operations.

Specially providing a Networking solution on Remote Desktop connectivity using CITRIX XenApps between Central Database existing at Kabul and different provinces and demonstrate advantage/benefits of Citrix XenApps over Terminal Services (RDP).

Key Challenges:

The most important challenge in Afghanistan is of political nature:

  • Serious functional capacity constraints and Security issues at provinces to support IT operations
  • Non-availability of safe transport means to travel to provinces

    • Apart from above mentioned key challenges, the bank itself has its own challenges in terms of secure communication for banking application as mentioned below.

  • Reporting and Printing issues from the remote locations because of Terminal Services (RDP protocol) on VSat
  • Bandwidth costing on current microwave technology running on RAD modems
  • Application (CBS) performance issues

Solution Provided (Proof of Concept-PoC):

Soham provided a turnkey solution for the bank and followed below approach:

  • Citrix XenApps Fundamentals 5.0 is installed in one of Dell PCs in existing test environment in Azizi Bank, Kabul office.
  • Configured Citrix XenApps server with Public IP address on one NIC and other NIC is configured with Local IP address which is pulled automatically from DHCP server. Public IP is for external communication private IP is for internal communication to connect with other servers (Domain controller, DB Server etc).
  • Two clients (Laptop and PC) are configured to connect to the Citrix Server, simulating as two remote branch offices
  • VSAT connectivity between Clients and Server was established
  • Citrix XenApps server is configured to access Oracle DB and other banking applications from test Oracle DB server
  • Citrix XenApps server is attached to Domain controller for User authentication

    • Technology Used:

    Comtech Satellite system
    Cisco routers 2811, Adaptive Security Appliance- Cisco ASA 5500
    Intrusion Detection System - Cisco IDS 4215
    Dell high end servers, HP servers
    Cisco ACS, Citrix Xenapps virtualization, think client for remote users

    Result:

    Successfully achieved all key challenges and reduced printing time from 16minutes to 2secs. Provided a secured Remote Desktop connectivity to all the branches across the country