For over a century, the Government Saving Bank (GSB) has strived to provide Thai people with objectives to promote saving and financial sustainability across generations. As a social bank in a digital age, the GSB is now using Huawei SD-WAN solution to improve its infrastructure, facilitate clients’ business needs, and compete with other commercial banks.
“Digital banking is crucial to our current operation,” he said. “In the past two years, we have transformed GSB banking experience by implementing Huawei’s software-defined networking in a wide area network (SD-WAN) in our infrastructure, which helps to reduce our operation costs, accelerates service rollouts and ensures agile WAN interconnections.”
“We have partially moved from our traditional banking system to rely on this Software as a Service (SaaS) via the SD-WAN solution. Purpose-built to a full service, on-demand interconnection between our branches and our clients, the SD-WAN solution enables us to efficiently operate with less traffic, and more precision, when it comes to the handling and managing of our database overall,” he added.
When asked about the differences and improvements that people would notice, Mr. Boonson smiled and replied with a question, “How long do you think people can wait to complete a single banking transaction these days?”
“Exactly!” He noted our hesitation and continued: “We are no longer used to waiting, and banking transactions that require hours of commuting and waiting at a branch to complete is becoming rather obsolete.”
“As a state enterprise, we had to go through the auction process to acquire our operational software. Huawei SD-WAN does pass all the requirements that we were looking for: it enables WAN simplification, bandwidth efficiency and a seamless on-ramp interconnection without sacrificing security and data privacy. Besides, it also offers the most reasonable price on the market.”
“The SD-WAN solution has, in fact, transformed this equation of distance and time that we used to know. Not only does it allow for a faster online banking experience anywhere via its cloud-based system, but it also ensures the quality of service and safety which benefit both the bank and our customers.”
“In a way, SD-WAN does everything for us, from the setting up to the maintenance of the operating system. This allows us to focus on achieving our main objectives – to promote savings and financial sustainability in these difficult times. In the next few years, we also plan to expand our branches from slightly over a thousand to approximately six thousand small branches, and SD-WAN will surely help us achieve our goal with its centralised orchestration which also facilitates our branch offices.”
“These small branches – which will operate as if they were banking headquarters – will cover most areas across Thailand, and therefore allow easy access to our customers.”
“Of course, our traditional ways of doing banking transactions will still exist, as there are still people who do not have access to this new way of banking. But by its nature as an outsourced software service that can be constantly upgraded and improved, rather than replaced, SD-WAN should be around for a long time.”
Mr. Boonson concluded: “The key to SD-WAN is to establish a solid networking backbone that can welcome more people as their need arises. After all, if we act as a social bank that helps people live better with better financial plans, we too will survive and prosper.”