Datacraft India, part of Dimension Data subsidiary Datacraft Asia, has been awarded an $18 million contract to design, build and manage a nationwide backbone network for the State Bank of India (SBI).
Datacraft Asia CEO Ron Cattell says this is the largest network system integration project contract awarded by a financial sector enterprise in India.
In its first phase, the new network will support more than 1 500 branches of SBI and its seven associated banks and 3 000 automated teller machines (ATMs) in 49 cities across India.
The State Bank of India is the largest commercial bank of India in terms of turnover, profits, assets, deposits, branches and employees. It has more than 90 million customers.
The project is part of a $100 million strategic IT initiative SBI is undertaking over the next three years that also encompasses new systems for core banking, Internet banking, asset management, treasury operations and trade finance.
"The paradigm of SBI is changing," says SBI MD Y Radhakrishnan. "Our objective is to integrate all our service delivery channels so that we can offer a consistent set of products and services to our customers online and in real-time.
"The national backbone network Datacraft is building for us is a critical foundation for the whole initiative and will enable rapid transactions between our branches."
Cattell says the contract extends Datacraft`s role as the networking partner of choice for India`s financial sector. "Datacraft has built the current top two banking networks for ANZ Grindlays and HSBC in the country, and this SBI project tops in size."
Over the next few months, Datacraft will work with SBI on a project to link a number of branches across the country with a newly established data centre in Mumbai.
Phase one of the national backbone network will see more than 1 500 branches and 3 000 ATMs connected by March 2003.
The contract also includes uptime maintenance support services and the all-hour delivery of managed services.
Datacraft will install networking equipment from Cisco Systems and BSNL, and other private carriers will provide bandwidth for the SBI network.
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