Comp 1486 - Information System Management - National Bank of Kuwait (nbk)

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- Reduced Costs:

The newly modeled infrastructure has reduced the cost of physical servers and hardware dramatically. About 40 percent of infrastructure needs has been reduced in the virtual platform using Hyper-V instead of using the one-to-one server ratio in previous mainframe technology. In addition, NBK has saved 20 percent in software licensing cost as well. Up to 4 virtual servers can run onto a single licensed server.

- Possibilities of Future Growth:

NBK’s current business improvement through Hyper-V technology and Microsoft System Center shows a promising future growth. The Private Cloud infrastructure allows the company to connect all the branches within and outside the region. The headquarter engage all branches into core banking operations without having them build new interface adapters and middleware for each locations. Therefore, NBK now can think of publishing services, internet banking for example. Furthermore, the IT department in NBK no longer has to focus on provisioning servers to fulfill a request. The provisioning and other tasks are now automated; hence, the IT department now puts emphasize more on strategic IT efforts. For example, NBK is now planning to introduce mobile banking which they never would have thought of with their previous technology. Such innovative strategies are essential for a banking industry like NBK to prosper in future.

- Issues with Microsoft SQL Server and solutions:

NBK encountered some serious issues with database security. The installed Microsoft SQL Server 2008 proposed effective configuration management, key management capabilities and encryption, and enhanced auditing service. However, it was unable to prevent accidental changes to application database done by “super users”, which may refer to a database administrator for example. Most of these changes were critical and difficult to identify; therefore, they became serious issues in terms of regulatory compliance.

As a solution to this problem, NBK later implemented Guardium to obtain real-time security alerts and more scalability. It provided the company with cross-DBMS audit architecture to manage the massive amount of transactions without interrupting them.

Assessment:

Regardless of some flaws, NBK will continue using Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and Microsoft SQL Server. Significant developments such as foundational virtualization, server consolidation, business agility, and reduction of cost have been achieved through Hyper-V. In addition, by compressing and optimizing datacenter and backups, SQL Server effectively has made the banking system scalable. NBK may wish to update to SQL Server 2008 R2 which comes with advanced auditing features to protect server environment. It also brings more secured and reliable services such as Master Data Services and Multi Server Management to enable more efficient analysis and integration within the server.

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References

Book Reference:

Bocij, Paul, Greasley, Andrew & Hickle, Simon, 2008, Business Information System,

Prentice Hall, Italy

Electronic Reference:

"Microsoft Case Study: Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise - National Bank of Kuwait." Microsoft.com. 04 Aug. 2011. Web. 13 Nov. 2011.

http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Windows-Server-2008-R2-Enterprise/National-Bank-of-Kuwait/National-Bank-of-Kuwait-Virtualizes-75-Percent-of-Servers-for-40-Percent-Cost-Savings/4000010926

"Microsoft Windows Server | Hyper-V | Virtualization | Virtual Server | HyperV Workload Performance." Microsoft.com. Web. 13 Nov. 2011.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/windows-server/hyper-v.aspx

"Microsoft SQL Server." Wikipedia.com. 08 Nov. 2011. Web. 13 Nov. 2011. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_SQL_Server

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