The Path to Strategic Alignment
One of Europe’s largest banks had 12 outsourced data centres located across the APAC region. Several technology platforms held within these data centres were nearing end-of-life and due to be replaced.
The bank engaged PTS to develop an APAC region digital transformation strategy. The strategy identified a window of opportunity in which to align technology refresh and investment with a consolidation of systems and services under a new regional architecture. This would be aligned to the bank’s global IT strategy, wherein future IT services were to be transitioned to an Infrastructure Utility Service (IUS) model.
Could the Bank Save Money Through Consolidation?
The digital transformation strategy included the hypothesis that the organisation could save money by consolidating data centres. Specifically, a reduction in the 12 APAC data centres (spread across Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan) to two APAC regional hub data centres, located in Hong Kong and Singapore.
A key challenge for any consolidation in the region was to maintain jurisdictional compliance regarding where data was located. A further challenge was to ensure the local businesses were not impacted by latency issues, should IT services be located in offshore data centres.
PTS was engaged by the bank to determine an approach, the potential savings, and the feasibility of realising them.
Could The Bank Deliver Improved Services at a Lower Cost?
A detailed discovery was undertaken by PTS across the six countries. This included a review of existing IT services and applications detailed in the Bank’s IT services catalogue. Consideration was also given to future potential applications, IT services, and data centre facilities.
Current, future, and transition costs for the data centres were assessed based on a reduced data centre footprint, and across a 5-year operational period.
What Would a Future IT Environment Look Like?
The study recommended transition to a robust APAC regional private cloud, located within two regional data centres, each capable of taking the full regional IT load.
It was determined replication across two regional data centres would provide enhancement through reduced risk of data loss, and improved effectiveness of a recovery solution for all the client’s systems. At the same time, savings could be made through technology upgrades, such as to a single consolidated storage platform.
IT services required to remain within country due to regulatory or latency requirements would be located within micro data centres, with redundancy located within the regional data centres.
Making the Case for Change
Bringing a comprehensive understanding of the APAC data dentre, network, and cloud services marketplace, combined with knowledge of the regulatory requirements across all the countries in the region, meant PTS was appropriately skilled to develop a compelling business case.
The comprehensive assessment resulted in a business case to deliver $20m USD of potential savings over a 5-year period. The business case was endorsed by the client’s global management team.
