Financial Customer Use Case: Enterprise Architecture for Secure Hybrid Cloud and Hybrid Work Modernization
In today’s ever-changing market forces, finance leaders are finding themselves responsible for new strategies and solutions. To assist modern finance leaders, NetServ is here to help you with your digital transformation strategy.
Recently, we worked with a financial client to assess, design, and implement future technology reference architecture. But why did the clients want us to do this? To keep in line with their digital transformation strategy by enhancing their hybrid-cloud, campus, and branch environments.
Below, we cover several use cases of enterprise architecture and what you need to know!
Customer Business Requirements
- Digital transformation to improve business agility for the organization, human resources, governance, and reliable information systems
- Robust and secure platform for payment and financial system
- Achieve sustainable economic growth, and enhance the financial market
- Improved Financial application stability, security, and compliance
- Seamless and secure touchless transactions for end customers
- Application performance and user experience with secure hybrid work model
NetServ Methodology for Digital Transformation
With the following phased approach, we will ensure you achieve the desired result through digital transformation.
Customer’s Requirements and Technology Mapping
Prior to the detailed design, we evaluated different technology options based on the client’s future goals. Our priorities for DC and Cloud modernization were agility, reliability, scalability, performance, security, and ease to operationalize enterprise architecture. Based on these requirements, the following diagram represents our proposed design stack:
DC and Cloud Modernization Solution
After ensuring that the finalized technology stack delivers the Customer’s expected future architecture requirements, we designed the solution to achieve customer business goals using industry best practices.
Resilient, Scalable, and Elastic Architecture
The application and infrastructure resiliency, elasticity, and scale were the key requirements to support future growth. The two data centers are active-active and have seamless connectivity to multi-cloud (AWS and Azure) for scalability, reliability, and business continuity leveraging Cisco Intersight, Intersight IKS, and ACI anywhere. With a focus to achieve agility, scalability, and reliability, a comprehensive campus, and branch enterprise network is designed using Cisco DNAC, SD-Access, and SD-WAN. Essentially, these Cisco SDN technologies provide the financial customers an additional layer of analysis, controls over access policies, network segmentation, network assurance, and endpoint monitoring
Multi-domain Security
As a financial customer, protecting their customer data is the topmost priority. Keeping that in mind we focused on multi-domain end-to-end security to secure the business-critical applications, infrastructure, and data. We designed policy-based segmentation and Role-Based Access Control across the Cloud, DC, Campus, and branch using ISE SGTs and ACI EPGs for north-south and east-west communication.
The DC design includes host-level segmentation using TrustSec integration between ISE, Tetration, APIC, and FTD. The Campus uses the ISE SGT tags to segment the traffic between corporate users, guests, IoT, PCI, etc. This policy-based security approach improves the security (application, user, and IoT) and allows customers to accelerate innovation without compromising on security, stability, or compliance.
Analytics and Automation
Data analytics and automation are the key requirements to improve the business process and increase user efficiency. We incorporated different analytics platforms and integrations to get the in-depth application, network, and user visibility. Automation capabilities incorporated to a) automation of IT workflows and application deployment agility and b) automating operations for faster recovery, achieving continuous improvement and rapidly responding to growing disruptions and threats. The Cisco DNAC assurance, stealth watch, SD-WAN analytics, Tetration, and Intersight platforms provided customers with comprehensive analytics and cross-platform workflow automation capabilities to achieve desired transformation outcomes.
Observability
Modernizing customers’ IT operations required comprehensive and advanced monitoring and observability solutions to be added in the design.
Full-stack observability was a key requirement and so the observability was included into each layer of infrastructure and domains. ThousandEyes, which provides a 360-degree view hybrid digital ecosystem solution, has been added in DC, Cloud, Campus, Branch and Internet domains. Secure-X is a key solution for security visibility, and it integrates with most of the Cisco security solutions and a few 3rd party solutions. AppDynamics provides various application insights and business benefits which enable customers to prioritize decisions based on business impact. AppDynamics correlates application performance to business outcomes and customer experience, which enables financial customers to prioritize and proactively take action for critical applications.
Summary
With the above enterprise reference architecture, this financial customer will achieve the following key business outcomes:
- Increased Infrastructure availability SLA
- Improved time to provision IT Infra services
- Increased automation capability adoption
- Improved network and security compliance
- Improved MTTD and MTTR
NetServ’s Enterprise Architecture for DC, Cloud, and Hybrid Work Modernization solution aids financial organizations to stay ahead of an ever-shifting market that impacts business. Contact NetServ to learn how we can help you improve your enterprise architecture with leading-edge technologies.