In today’s digital age, IT organizations face numerous challenges that can hinder their ability to provide seamless services. Common pain-points include frequent outages, unexplained end-user experiences, negative brand impact, unaccomplished business demands, and complex application environments. These issues are exacerbated by technology silos, an overload of alerts, inaccurate and prolonged root cause analyses, and inadequate current SRE/DevOps tools.
In this case study, we will explore how HEAL Software helped the largest public sector bank overcome these challenges and achieve significant improvements in their IT operations.
Background
The largest public sector bank in the country, with over 20,000 branches, 60,000 ATMs, and 150 million users, was facing numerous challenges in its IT operations. The bank’s IT teams were struggling to manage the complexity of its applications, which included Core Banking, Internet Banking, Mobile Banking, Treasury, ATMs, Cards, UPI, and Payment Gateway. The bank’s IT infrastructure was fragmented, with multiple tools and vendors, leading to alert overload, inaccurate root cause analysis, and prolonged downtime.
Pain Points
The bank’s IT teams were plagued by:
- Frequent and random outages, disrupting services and affecting user satisfaction
- Unexplained end-user experiences, leading to dissatisfaction and frustration
- Brand equity impact, with service disruptions tarnishing the bank’s reputation
- Business demands not being met, with the bank struggling to keep up with evolving business needs
- Complex applications, making it challenging to manage numerous, intricate applications
- Technology silos and tool overload, hindering efficiency and leading to alert overload
- Inaccurate root cause analysis, making it time-consuming and often inaccurate to identify the root cause of issues
- Enhanced capacity not solving issues, with increasing capacity not resolving the underlying problems
- Ineffective SRE/DevOps tools, not providing sufficient support for IT operations
Why HEAL was Chosen
After evaluating various IT operations management solutions, the bank chose HEAL due to its ability to provide real-time monitoring, AI-assisted root cause analysis, and predictive analytics. The bank was impressed by HEAL’s ability to identify and resolve issues before they impacted end-users, and its scalability and flexibility to support the bank’s growing IT infrastructure needs.
HEAL was implemented to transform the bank’s IT operations, reducing downtime, improving MTTR, and optimizing its IT infrastructure. The bank aimed to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty, increase revenue and growth, reduce costs and improve efficiency, and enhance its brand reputation and competitiveness.
Key Features of HEAL
- Real-Time Monitoring: Continuous monitoring of applications, infrastructure, and services to detect issues early.
- AI-Assisted Root Cause Analysis: Quickly identify and resolve issues using advanced AI algorithms.
- Predictive Analytics: Anticipate and prevent issues before they impact operations.
- Automated Incident Response: Minimize downtime with automated responses to incidents.
- Integration with Existing Tools: Seamless integration with the bank’s current tools and systems.
- Scalable and Flexible Architecture: Support the bank’s growing IT infrastructure needs.
Implementation
The implementation process involved:
- Data Collection and Setup: Gathering necessary data and setting up the HEAL platform.
- Configuration: Tailoring HEAL’s monitoring and analytics capabilities to the bank’s specific needs.
- Training: Educating IT teams on HEAL’s features and functionality.
- Testing and Validation: Ensuring HEAL’s performance met the bank’s requirements through rigorous testing.
Results
After implementing HEAL, the bank achieved significant improvements in its IT operations.
Key results include:
- 425+ Hours of Downtime Averted Per Month: Significant reduction in service disruptions.
- 10+ Issues Resolved Per Month: Proactive issue resolution led to fewer disruptions.
- 50+ Nodes Monitored: Continuous monitoring with a 10% month-on-month reduction in outages.
- Unique Data Sources and Workloads Monitored: Comprehensive data collection for better insights.
- Downtime Averted: Significant reduction in application downtime.
- Root Cause Identified: Faster and more accurate root cause analysis.
- Workloads Optimized: Improved performance and efficiency of workloads.
- Capacity Chokepoints Identified: Better resource management.
- Improved End-User Experience: Enhanced online banking applications led to happier customers and faster growth.
Monitoring Results
Day 0: Deploy the application for end-to-end monitoring.
Day 1: Begin collecting observability data, including transactions, infrastructure utilization, service utilization, log data, and trace data, to gain insights into application performance and utilization, aiming to reduce observability time by 50%.
Day 20: Implement early warning systems with dynamic baselines, auto-thresholding, and automated root cause analysis (RCA) to prevent outages, and reduce Mean Time to Identify (MTTI) and Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) by 67%
Month 3: Provide capacity insights, including chokepoint analysis, workload pattern predictions, and infrastructure utilization predictions. This helps prevent future outages, identify current capacity relocation needs, and address chokepoints. 80% Reduction in Storage Requirement. Identification of top 5% metrics optimized storage use. 10% Month-On-Month Reduction in Infra/Config Related Outages. Continuous improvement in infrastructure reliability.
Business Impact
The implementation of HEAL has had a significant impact on the bank’s business.
Key benefits include:
Reduced Downtime
- Improved customer satisfaction and loyalty: With reduced downtime, customers can access the bank’s services without interruption, leading to increased satisfaction and loyalty.
- Reduced costs: Reduced downtime also means reduced costs associated with downtime, such as lost productivity and revenue.
- Enhanced brand reputation: Helped to maintain a positive brand reputation, as customers are more likely to trust a bank that can provide reliable and consistent services.
Improved MTTR
- Increased efficiency: Bank’s IT teams can resolve issues more quickly, resulting in increased efficiency and productivity.
- Improved IT team morale: They can resolve issues more quickly and efficiently.
Optimized IT Infrastructure
- Increased scalability: Bank’s IT systems can scale more easily to meet growing demands, resulting in increased efficiency and productivity.
- Improved reliability: IT systems are more reliable, resulting in reduced downtime and improved customer satisfaction.
Conclusion
By leveraging AI-assisted root cause analysis, predictive analytics, and real-time monitoring, the bank has been able to reduce downtime, improve MTTR, and optimize its IT infrastructure. The bank’s IT teams are now better equipped to manage the complexity of its applications, ensuring a better experience for its customers and driving business growth.
Recommendations
Based on the bank’s experience with HEAL, the following recommendations are made:
- Expand HEAL Implementation: Implement HEAL in other areas of the bank’s IT infrastructure.
- Leverage AI-Assisted Root Cause Analysis: Extend the use of AI-assisted root cause analysis to other areas of the bank’s IT operations.
- Continuous Monitoring and Analysis: Continue to monitor and analyze the bank’s IT operations to identify areas for further improvement.
- Broaden HEAL’s Application: Consider implementing HEAL in other areas of the bank’s business, such as customer service or supply chain management.
About HEAL Software
HEAL Software is a renowned provider of AIOps (Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations) solutions. HEAL Software’s unwavering dedication to leveraging AI and automation empowers IT teams to address IT challenges, enhance incident management, reduce downtime, and ensure seamless IT operations. Through the analysis of extensive data, our solutions provide real-time insights, predictive analytics, and automated remediation, thereby enabling proactive monitoring and solution recommendation. Other features include anomaly detection, capacity forecasting, root cause analysis, and event correlation. With the state-of-the-art AIOps solutions, HEAL Software consistently drives digital transformation and delivers significant value to businesses across diverse industries.