2020 was a year of new developments in financial technology for China’s banking industry. In August 2019, the People’s Bank of China released the “Financial Technology (FinTech) Development Plan (2019-2021)”, marking a new stage in the innovation and digital transformation of financial technology in the banking sector. Market research firm IDC believes that with the deepening application of financial technology, emerging technologies such as distributed systems, cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, and blockchain are increasingly being practiced in the banking industry, especially the wave of transformation towards distributed architecture, which is leading a new round of IT construction in the banking sector.
Among various banking institutions, rural commercial banks (hereinafter referred to as: RCBs) have the greatest potential for digital transformation and enhancement of financial technology. In the first half of this year, a joint research team formed by the Financial Technology Development and Research Committee of the China Internet Finance Association and the Outlook Think Tank conducted a special survey and released the self-assessment results of the digital capabilities of Chinese commercial banks, in which RCBs scored an average of 2.49, ranking last among six categories of commercial banks, indicating significant room for improvement.
Zhejiang Ruian Rural Commercial Bank is a typical rural commercial bank. Located in Ruian City, Wenzhou, it is part of the Zhejiang Rural Credit System and was established in May 2014 from a cooperative bank. It currently has 110 branches, with self-service banks and harvest stations spread throughout Ruian City, making it the bank with the most branches, the most employees, and the most customers in Ruian City. With the development of internet mobility in banking, Ruian Rural Commercial Bank has also launched WeChat banking, mobile banking, mobile malls, and harvest interconnectivity. To more efficiently support and manage internet business, decentralized branches, and business personnel, as well as to better serve customers, Ruian Rural Commercial Bank has adopted solutions such as VMware‘s modern application platform, positioning itself at the forefront of digital transformation.
Unified Technology Platform from Virtualization to Cloud-Native
In 2019, with the introduction of financial technology planning, the commercialization of emerging technologies has become increasingly rich. IDC pointed out that in an environment where digital transformation is being fully promoted, banking institutions need to transform their technology routes to support business innovation. Over the past year, the banking industry has accelerated its exploration of distributed technology innovation, with most vendors launching new generation solutions that support both centralized and distributed applications. Among them, VMware is a typical representative.
As a long-established enterprise-level virtualization platform vendor, VMware has undergone a series of significant transformations in recent years, driving itself towards a cloud-native platform represented by containerization technology. VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) is one of the most widely deployed and trusted cloud computing infrastructures today, capable of achieving consistent infrastructure and operations in private clouds, public clouds, and edge scenarios. vSphere is the cornerstone of VCF and the mainstream technology of traditional enterprise-level virtualization. In April 2020, VMware released vSphere 7.0, which introduced the new vSphere for Kubernetes (now renamed vSphere with Tanzu). vSphere for Kubernetes, in conjunction with the latest VCF, provides native support for cloud-native applications, offering enterprises a unified virtualization and container technology platform and transformation path.
Ruian Rural Commercial Bank established an efficient and flexible IT system platform around 2010 through cooperation with VMware, to respond to rapidly developing business needs, improve the agility and flexibility of new business deployments, and address challenges related to system high availability, disaster recovery, and other security and stability issues, providing a high level of business continuity assurance. With the continuous popularization of virtualization technology, an increasing number of critical business systems have gradually migrated to VMware‘s virtualization platform, with the proportion of virtualized business systems far exceeding that of physical business systems. As internet finance has developed, Ruian Rural Commercial Bank has also vigorously promoted its internet finance business, which urgently requires cloud-native technologies represented by containers.
To address these challenges, Ruian Rural Commercial Bank adopted the VMware Cloud Foundation solution from an overall architecture perspective, successfully deploying the VMware modern application platform. Based on this platform, Ruian Rural Commercial Bank can quickly deploy U2VL business systems, emerging business systems, and cloud-native business systems. In terms of application innovation, Ruian Rural Commercial Bank has tried various open-source solutions, but none met the needs of digital transformation in terms of service, stability, or future solution direction. Ultimately, Ruian Rural Commercial Bank chose VCF + VMware vSphere with Kubernetes along with VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid for multi-cluster management to support the modernization and innovation of banking applications.
Mobile Office Platform for Future Work
The biggest impact of the 2020 pandemic on society has been the emergence of the unmanned economy, with remote work and mobile office becoming the mainstream working methods for the future. In the wave of digital economy and digital transformation, IDC believes that traditional standardized working models can no longer meet employee needs. By utilizing mobile devices, intelligent assistants, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), artificial intelligence, and more human-machine collaboration and virtual-physical integration, future work will achieve seamless connectivity across multiple devices and scenarios.
In September 2020, at the VMworld 2020 conference, the VMware Future-Ready Workforce solution was launched, providing an excellent employee office experience and end-to-end zero-trust security controls while simplifying management. By combining VMware Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), digital workspaces, and endpoint security technologies, VMware helps IT organizations manage and optimize secure access for various devices to all cloud applications, while providing a simpler, safer, and high-performance user experience for decentralized office needs.
VMware Workspace ONE is VMware‘s core platform for future work. VMware continuously innovates to make Workspace ONE the preferred digital workspace platform for IT teams and employees in the industry, providing a unified console to better manage critical business applications and devices across all platforms, from applications to mobile devices to personal computers and IoT devices, enhancing security.
For Ruian Rural Commercial Bank, which has nearly 100 branches spread throughout the city, ensuring that each branch and ordinary staff member has a computer, with some business employees even requiring two computers, managing the numerous computers individually by the IT department is time-consuming and exhausting, leaving little time to focus on projects that could bring additional benefits to the company. As information technology continues to evolve rapidly, and with the continuous expansion and innovation of business, the upgrade of systems and hardware has been significantly accelerated, making it a major challenge to maximize support services for personal terminals with limited funds.
During the pandemic, the inability to work remotely became increasingly prominent. Once employees left the office, they could not access their computer desktops and applications, limiting their ability to respond to emergencies outside of working hours, while only IT department employees could remotely control desktops using the company’s internal network. At the same time, in recent years, BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) has become prevalent, and Ruian Rural Commercial Bank is also exploring how to ensure that employees can work effectively and securely through mobile devices anytime and anywhere.
Building a mobile office platform has become an urgent task for Ruian Rural Commercial Bank. In terms of mobile office platform construction, Ruian Rural Commercial Bank has adopted the intelligent-driven digital workspace platform VMware Workspace ONE, creating a “mobile office desk” that makes IT management easier and employee work more efficient. The launch of Workspace ONE allows employees of Ruian Rural Commercial Bank to easily complete their work anytime, anywhere, on any device, while ensuring data security.
Unified Network Security, Storage, and Operations Management
As a giant in virtualization technology, VMware has been continuously striving to transform into a comprehensive cloud computing solution provider. VMware has received further recognition from industry analysts: it was ranked as the number one vendor in the global cloud systems and service management software market by IDC; for the third consecutive year, it was named a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for WAN Edge Infrastructure; and it was recognized as an industry leader in the The Forrester Wave 2020 Q3 Infrastructure Automation Platforms report, receiving the highest score in 22 criteria. In addition, VMware is committed to achieving native security from edge to cloud.
Ruian Rural Commercial Bank began deploying VMware‘s virtualization platform technology around 2010. Due to the early construction of this platform, many solutions at that time only achieved security granularity at the host level, and its internal security performance urgently needed updating. With the latest adoption of VMware‘s modern application platform solutions moving towards cloud-native development, Ruian Rural Commercial Bank has also adopted VMware‘s solutions for network and security.
Previously, Ruian Rural Commercial Bank had implemented an SDN architecture for physical networks, but its virtual cloud architecture lacked unified and integrated management across different networks. This time, with the help of the VMware NSX solution, different production areas and infrastructures (virtual machines, containers, X86 physical architecture) are managed through a unified network platform. In addition to achieving a unified network architecture and management, the security of the virtual cloud architecture and virtual desktops must also meet new compliance requirements. First, security isolation is required between different business areas and internally; communication security between different desktop groups must be protected, and to comply with compliance 2.0, Ruian Rural Commercial Bank needs to implement further security reinforcement for desktops based on different personnel and identity requirements through NSX‘s identity-based ID security.
In terms of data storage, Ruian Rural Commercial Bank has adopted the VMware HCI distributed all-flash storage solution. Through VMware vSAN, it first addresses data storage and scalability issues, while vSAN‘s unique security mechanisms resolve data security and reliability issues. This time, Ruian Rural Commercial Bank adopted all-flash VMware HCI ReadyNode hardware and Intel Xeon Gold processors, ensuring the performance of Ruian Rural Commercial Bank’s modern application platform.
In terms of architecture management, VMware vRealize Operations Management allows users to gain a comprehensive understanding of the operation of desktops, vSAN, NSX, and containers, collecting and analyzing performance data, correlating anomalies, and identifying the root causes of performance issues. The capacity management provided optimizes resource utilization, while policy-based configuration management ensures compliance and eliminates the proliferation of configurations and deviations.
According to Zhou Xi, Deputy General Manager of the Information Technology Department of Zhejiang Ruian Rural Commercial Bank, “VMware‘s modern application platform solution meets our bank’s demand for an integrated infrastructure platform. At the same time, VMware‘s leading technology route can fully support our bank’s development of innovative businesses in the future, and we look forward to exploring the path of information construction together.”
In summary:VMware‘s overall solution has successfully helped Ruian Rural Commercial Bank’s information construction reach a new level. The VMware modern application platform has improved the resilience and security of Ruian Rural Commercial Bank’s internet business infrastructure, significantly shortened the time to launch new businesses, and facilitated the rapid launch and secure operation of its internet and innovative businesses, allowing Ruian Rural Commercial Bank to maintain rapid growth. By adopting the latest VMware cloud-native technology, Ruian Rural Commercial Bank has set a benchmark for the digital transformation of rural commercial banks and even commercial banks nationwide.
For more content, please visit the “Cloud Technology Era” website:www.cloudtimemag.comArticles from “Cloud Technology Era” are also widely featured on:WeChat public account, TianTian KuaiBao, JinRi TouTiao, Weibo, Zhihu column, Sohu News, NetEase client, Baidu Baijia, Baijiahao, Zhongguancun Online Echo, Beijing Time Technology Channel, YiDianHao, Jiemian, 51CTO Blog, e-works Blog, UC Subscription Account, Sina Finance Headlines, Sina Highlights, iResearch Network Column, TechWeb Blog, etc.“Cloud Technology Era” is a quality technology author on JinRi TouTiao, selected for the JinRi TouTiao Selected Channel