Customized Branch Services at a Lower Cost? That’s Not an Oxymoron

By Harpreet Geekee, CTO and Senior Managing Director, Global FSI

In recent posts, I’ve shared my thoughts on how Juniper Networks’ hybrid cloud and security capabilities support the efforts of financial services industry (FSI) firms to achieve their fundamental CRA (Cost, Risk, Agility) goals. Naturally, our security attributes primarily address the risk component of that equation. Let’s do a deeper dive on Juniper’s Cloud-enabled Branch offering, which focuses on agility benefits, while simultaneously delivering cost and risk advantages.

Consider the process of opening a new bank branch; every branch has similar baseline needs, such as network connectivity and firewall protection. The legacy IT implementation model applies cookie-cutter standards, with every site receiving an identical packaged rollout of access and capabilities. While this may simplify the immediate task at hand, it’s certainly not cost effective in the long run.

Consider a new branch being established to serve a high net worth (HNW) demographic. Such a location might have a higher touch, “white glove” service expectation, with a greater emphasis on products like private banking, brokerage and underwriting. This branch would logically require different policies and permissions than a remote satellite location (a two-person supermarket kiosk, for instance) that delivers a limited suite of services. The underlying hardware required may also differ – for example, a rural branch may be connected by copper wire or a traditional branch via a T1 line, while the HNW location described above may have access to high-speed fiber connectivity. In any case, a cookie-cutter approach will not allow the new branch to easily adapt to changing demographics or the unanticipated needs of its clientele.

The financial services market has demonstrated the need for scalable, software-driven and operationally efficient branch equipment. Enter Juniper’s Cloud-Enabled Branch solution, which gives customers the option to employ a “pay-as-you-grow model.” The idea of deploying customer premises equipment (CPE) in a physical setting is well accepted. Juniper takes this model a step further, enabling service providers and enterprises to host these functions in the NFV cloud, delivering a highly customized and flexible user experience at a lower cost. 

Using Juniper’s Cloud-Enabled Branch solution, banks can elect to enable a customized set of network capabilities (e.g., brokerage products, a dedicated fiber channel, WiFi access), depending on the persona of a given branch. Even more importantly, when the inevitable change requests arise, these tasks can be performed from a central location rather than requiring a site visit to reconfigure the entire branch. Such changes can now be executed in minutes instead of weeks, with significantly less resource commitment.

Under the legacy model, each branch would be configured to match the needs of the most feature-rich location. The cost saving implications of this arrangement are obvious, as are the potential risks of unauthorized system access, making security considerations top-of-mind. With Juniper’s Cloud-Enabled Branch solution, FSI firms potentially pay only for what they use. This also means that total cost of ownership is expected to decline both upfront and as the enterprise grows.

It’s an old project management maxim that you can only have two of these three choices: speed-to-market, low cost and high quality. But FSI firms are already well underway in their efforts to create pathways toward networks of the future, as is evidenced by our work with partners like BT, AT&T, Verizon and IBM. Juniper’s Cloud-Enabled Branch is enhancing that pathway by offering enhanced agility, lower cost and reduced risk simultaneously. It’s a great guide for FSI firms embarking on their own network modernization journeys.