CIOL: Tell us about Finacle's initiative in this regard?
TSV: Finacle architecture provides for additional stand in server capabilities, which can be spread across multiple regions to handle regional disturbances, cluster-aware for handling database failure, and load balancing features to route transactions to different available servers. Finacle also maintains required performance level and scalability after providing for these availability features.

Banks have scheduled downtime for regular software, hardware maintenance and end of day operations. The above disruptions to business are completely avoidable with the development of good processes, practices, alternate stand in solutions and appropriate training for administration and management.

Finacle with true 24*7 capabilities and stand in servers to support maintenance operations allow for non-stop banking services.

CIOL: What type of disaster recovery planning have you adopted in your company?
TSV: Infosys has set up its first disaster recovery center in the island of Mauritius. The disaster recovery center, complete with infrastructure, network connections and telecom facilities, is always on standby to take over client projects from across the globe. In case of any emergency this center serves as an alternate location for Infosys development centers.

CIOL: Is one-stop solution possible to ensure business continuity?
TSV: Today, banking is spread across the globe with multiple geographies; time-zones, with centralized large enterprise systems working round the clock, to ensure most banking operations are available everywhere. Complexity has increased with banks adopting heterogeneous, hardware, software systems, and applications, spread over WAN in multiple data centers.

Banks are reaching out to people by locating significant number of service outlets and other delivery channel close to the consumer. The service outlet numbers and remote locations add to the intricacy of the BCP. Mergers and acquisitions induce multiple types of hardware, communication equipments, software, processes, and workflows, work-cultures that add to the BCP complexity. Business continuity plan requires manual and automated processes to handle all of the above. Hence a one-stop solution might be too complex to design and maintain.

CIOL: What must be the steps taken by an organization, in terms of best practice, to prevent a possible potential disaster?
TSV: The general business continuity solutions for customers should ideally include risk and business impact analysis, risk management, crisis response action plans, monitoring and testing of operations, regulatory compliance, recovery plans, awareness planning and periodic reviews and revisions.