China: H3C Helps China Construction Bank Hebei Branch on Network Centralization

Customer Info

China Construction Bank found in 1954, is a leading bank in the PRC with branches in 38 provinces and cities. China Construction Bank Hebei Branch owns one of the 17 national first-class networks. It had started province-wide POS business, call centres and IP banking, owning 21,000 network centres for its organization, over 9,000 sets of ATM and 260 total functions self-serving banks. It was ranked top 28^th in first class capitalized value amongst the 1,000 banks in the Banker’s magazine of England in July 2002.

The Challenge

The bank has undergone structural change in operation to flatten the business management layer, which creates a corresponding change in network demand. Some branches were changed from operation units into business units, resulting in a change of role on the network. Since it is expensive to open separate network for operation and business usages, merging the two into one is needed that poses greater demand on the backbone network and access routers. For example, high network performance is required on the possessing power of high-end devices, high bandwidth service distribution ability, unity and planning on routing protocols and the QoS of access routers.

With the growth in digitalized financial data, the traditional private network owned by each bank is now facing transformation to merge with an open network for increasing inter-bank exchange. The banking industry is facing unprecedented challenge in data security, which is characterizing today’s banking networks. Banking is a core sector in the national economic development, the economic loss of a breakdown is inestimable. Telecom class reliability is a criterion of a good network in the financial industry.

China Construction Bank has 38 first level branches demanding centralization of account processing and data to achieve centralized management and decentralized operation. Through data centralization, China Construction Bank Hebei Branch can further keep alerted of any financial risk, enhance capital flow, operational efficiency and improve management mechanism.

Why H3C?

H3C’s high-end routers are chosen to as the provincial branches 1st and 2nd level backbone routers. H3C can offer solutions with telecom class reliability for meeting reliability and security requirements. It has passed through all the stringent testing, selection, verification and evaluation procedures from the bank before actual massive deployment.

Technology Solution

The digitalized project mainly involves VoIP solutions for call centres and telephone banking as well as capacity upgrade of PoS to cover the terminal card slot machines in Hebei.

NE08E was selected as backbone router for the main centre of Hebei Branch and its 11 outlets. NE08E provides dual control, dual electric power devices and independent HAU for more safety in convergence to enhance network reliability and security, connectible to the original network through AR4680. The whole network can support the industry’s next generation MPLS VPN technology to guarantee isolation between production and OA services. With forward compatibility design, it can be deployed in conjunction with routers from other vendors.

The Benefits

The Hebei Branch has achieved successful network revamp to improve its business to be more digitalized to keep ahead in the information driven financial industry.

Having a whole network with high compatibility, reliability, efficiency, security and multi-services simultaneous operation capability, interconnectivity and easy centralized management that meet new and diversified demands from its customers, the Hebei Branch is more equipped than ever to deliver high quality services in this competitive banking industry. Different division and businesses of the bank can now fully integrate speedily to enhance operational efficiency.

The speed and stability of card registration is greatly enhanced, the call centre can now have extend facilities and manpower to better serve its customers after capacity upgrade. IP phones are deployed to significantly reduce IDD expense.