Punjab & Maharashtra Co-Op. Bank Embraces IBM Smarter Computing to Support Its Branch Expansion and Online Presence

MUMBAI, India, Aug. 14, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Punjab & Maharashtra Co-op. Bank Ltd (PMC), one of India's youngest co-operative banks, has selected the IBM (NYSE: IBM) Smarter Computing approach to IT to accelerate its growth and reach in the fast developing financial services landscape in India. PMC Bank chose to migrate its applications including core banking to an IBM infrastructure with Power Systems to support the growing needs of its more than 66 branches, two extension counters and ATM network, while strengthening its online presence through remote banking.

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Headquartered in Mumbai, Maharashtra, the richest and fastest developing state in India, accountable for 25 percent of India's industrial output and five percent of its GDP [1], the client base of PMC Bank is growing and diversifying even faster. Established as a new bank in 1984, today PMC Bank supports more than 500,000 clients and more than 5500 crore of business. To keep up with its growth without compromising its standards of service and to be able to enrich its offerings while developing its branch and ATM network, PMC Bank needed a totally new concept for its IT infrastructure to support varied applications like mobile banking, SMS banking, Internet banking, Treasury operations and kiosk services.

"We want to offer our clients a banking experience which is easier, faster, more convenient and secure," said H Krishna Karanth, General Manager, PMC Bank. "We also want to enhance the role of our branches and let them focus on providing financial services advice and counsel, while leaving the transactions part to the IT infrastructure."

This means executing millions of transactions daily, handling iterations in a secure way, maintaining full data integrity across multiple subsystems and constantly balancing workloads. It also means dealing simultaneously with challenges such as managing risk and regulations, achieving optimum connectivity and finding new ways to attain efficiency and cost-savings. That is why PMC Bank considered IBM.

"Banks and financial institutions have achieved reduced operating costs with high performance for many years with IBM Power Systems," said Viswanath Ramswamy, Director, Power Systems, IBM India South Asia. "For PMC Bank, our goal is to provide a technology roadmap which will also assist the bank sustain its long-term growth. The choice of an IBM Smarter Computing solution over competitive platforms reaffirms our leadership in the Indian UNIX server market."

PMC Bank implemented IBM Power Systems built with IBM BladeCenter H, POWER7 blades, AIX operating system, IBM Storwize V7000 storage system and IBM Tivoli Storage Manager. Featuring IBM PowerVM virtualization technology, the system provides a more dynamic and flexible platform, and facilitates data sharing between bank branches more swiftly, while optimizing resources utilization and keeping costs under control. RAS (Reliability, Availability and Serviceability) and SSD (solid state drives) features automate data tiering to help PMC Bank handle peak loads in real time, thus improving response time for customers and reducing business down time due to hardware failures.

PMC Bank's entire implementation and consolidation was done in association with IBM Business Partner Orient Technologies.

For more information about Punjab & Maharashtra Co-op. Bank Ltd, please visit www.pmcbank.com

For more information on IBM India, please visit www.ibm.com/in

[1] Source: Mumbai Urban Infrastructure Project, Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA), July 2008.

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Raghavendra Ramesh
IBM India Media Relations
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Svetlana Stavreva
IBM Media Relations, Growth Markets 
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Tracy Sullivan
IBM Media Relations
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SOURCE IBM