Mahindra & Mahindra Financial Services Limited (MMFSL) is one of India’s leading non-banking finance companies focused on the rural and semi-urban sectors. It provides financing for Utility Vehicles (UVs), tractors and cars. MMFSL is a subsidiary of Mahindra & Mahindra Limited, a leading tractor and UV manufacturer with more than 60 years’ experience in the Indian market. MMFSL continues to expand via financing for vehicles not manufactured by Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. Currently, MMFSL has a network of 443 branches and about 2,500 employees.

The Challenge: Accelerate and Optimize Application Delivery

MMFSL was expanding rapidly across the Indian subcontinent, particularly in remote, rural villages and semi-urban towns. With its top management clear that IT had to be the backbone for the expanding business infrastructure, MMFSL started using Citrix Presentation Server™ for application delivery with improved performance and systems availability.

As Suresh A. Shanmugam, national head - Information Systems & Technology, Mahindra & Mahindra Financial Services Limited, explained, “Over time and with more distant branches being set up, timely information flow over the network became a problem. And once MMFSL migrated to data-heavy Oracle-based systems, sizing was becoming a major issue. In effect, since a large volume of data was involved, we had thought of splitting the database to different state levels. However, since we had Citrix, we dropped the logic of splitting and sized to higher-end servers deployed centrally; but not in all places. There was a negative impact on the speed of delivery of applications and data to the end user, primarily due to the deployment of Citrix in farthest and most remote locations. As a non-banking finance company, our core business activities center around collection of Equated Monthly Installments (EMIs) of the loans disbursed. The number of contracts materializing during month end scales up to about 15,000 and this volume was becoming difficult to support with existing networks.”

He continued, “Since we were already satisfied with Citrix technology, we decided to look for some new Citrix products that could help in efficiently delivering bulk data and sharing huge files, and leverage our investment in existing connectivity options. These challenges related to speed of delivery called for using a WAN optimization solution like Citrix WANScaler. The architecture also had to be configured in such a manner that WANScaler could be integrated into a Presentation Server environment. Currently, full-load applications with requirements use Presentation Server environments. The intent initially was to populate some applications through WANScaler for the remote location branches and some through Presentation Server based on the requirements for those locations. In the future, we plan to deploy WANScaler for very remote locations.”

MMFSL, like other Indian enterprises, also faced the challenge of keeping network bandwidth usage low to save money while ensuring high performance of applications.

Implementing Citrix WANScaler 8810 Series for Speedy Application Delivery

Initially, Mahindra Finance had partnered with two Silver Citrix® Solution Advisors — Orient Technologies for implementation and Magnamious Systems Private Limited for support — to implement a solution comprising Citrix Presentation Server and Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Server running on 15 IBM blade servers. In line with the business vision of the company and especially with respect to rapid expansion of locations in rural areas, Citrix addressed the need for scalability without disrupting existing business activities and services. Mahindra Finance again partnered with Orient Technologies for the implementation and support of Citrix WANScaler™ 8810 Series Server.

Now about 750 concurrent users in branches across India, including remote locations, are able to access applications such as enterprise resource planning, accounting, Voice over IP, Microsoft® Exchange and Web-based applications. These users, comprising administrators, data entry operators, middle management professionals, etc., connect through MPLS IP-based, broadband and VSAT links provided by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) such as HCL Comnet and HCL Infinity. Currently, 363 locations out of 443 have already been connected, with a goal of about 400 locations. The applications and services on major applications are all running on Presentation Server. The Point of Contact (POC) locations connecting over WANScaler are for a very small group of users.

Accelerating Application and Data Delivery

In line with the business vision of the company and especially with respect to rapid expansion of offices in rural areas, Citrix Presentation Server already addressed the need for scalability without disrupting existing business activities and services. Now, according to Shanmugam, with WANScaler, applications can be delivered faster over existing networks.

Shanmugam said, “Clearly, Citrix WANScaler has accelerated application delivery to dispersed branch offices over the wide area network. Users now spend their time using applications instead of waiting for them to load. Compression of traffic reduces the amount of data that traverses the WAN link and improves overall data transfer time. We do have business applications, control applications, backend applications and communications via Microsoft Exchange. Initially, we delivered these through Presentation Server and the same is being done for POC locations through WANScaler. Further, the unwanted broadcasting created by the individual nodes gets loaded heavily and the same is thrown out in the new system.”

WANScaler provides industry-leading compression technology to reduce link congestion, increase data throughput and accelerate application response. As a result, MMFSL can support more users and more application traffic on the WAN infrastructure. Moreover, administrators can configure applications with a QoS priority and minimum bandwidth, thus guaranteeing predictable application response times in heavily congested environments.

Expanding Branches and Users in Record Time

MMFSL is slated to launch a slew of other financial products and services in the housing finance and personal loans segments. To be sure, branches have to be up and running in record time and users should be able to access all core applications in order to make products available to customers much faster.

Affirmed Shanmugam, “With MMFSL launching new products and services, we expect more information to flow between various offices and more transactions to be conducted. More than ever, we need to instantly accelerate the delivery of applications to remote and branch users and enhance user productivity.”

Citrix WANScaler is a completely transparent, end-to-end solution for all IP-based WANs, eliminating the need for any changes to current network management tools, firewalls, network services or applications. The solution delivers increased WAN throughput and improved application response times for all applications, supporting hundreds of branch offices. WANScaler 8810, which transfers data in minutes using all of the available bandwidth, will be ideal for such scenarios.

Streamlining IT Administration

Shanmugam pointed out that the centralized application delivery and management capabilities of Presentation Server have been extremely useful during the company’s expansion drive in a challenging rural environment.

“In rural locations using a client/server architecture and having to go to each site for maintenance could have been quite challenging. In contrast, Citrix technology allows us to install applications on the server and deliver high-performance access to users, regardless of the location, age or type of the device. IT can now upgrade business applications on the server at any time and with no impact to users,” added Shanmugam.

Better Controls Lead to Better Manageability

Control and monitoring of branches are a key part of any deployment at MMFSL. Said Shanmugam, “Previously, we faced a number of monitoring and maintenance issues at branches in remote locations. Centralization, which was earlier achieved with the deployment of Presentation Server, has been enhanced with the deployment of WANScaler. Now, we know what types of files are being sent between different locations. I don’t have to worry about any number of users being added, and application accessibility is much more streamlined. Thanks to Citrix technologies, there are better controls in place, and top management, which has always placed emphasis on deploying the latest technologies, is extremely happy about that.”

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