DBS/POSB customers endured five hours of downtime on Monday as they could not withdraw money from ATMs, make NETS debit payment nor online transactions.
The bank blamed connectivity issues but the five hours caused tremendous inconvenience for their customers, whom resorted to social media to air their disappointment.
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Given that the Monetary Authority of Singapore has strict guidelines that requires blank IT infrastructure to be up 99.95%, anymore more downtime by DBS/POSB wil exceed the downtime allowance and may face penalties from the authorities.
This isn’t the first time that POSB/DBS’s customers had to endure downtime from the bank. In June 2013, the bank also blamed connectivity issues for a 30 mins downtime. In July 2010, the bank suffered 7 hours of downtime.
Here are three ways how NetGain Systems IT monitoring can help DBS/POSB prevent further IT downtime.
1. Set Threshold Limits To Activate Alerts
From experience, IT infrastructure downtime usually don’t just happen suddenly. Like a sick person, IT infrastructure downtime will show symptoms.
One of the key features of NetGain Systems IT monitoring solution is that it has the capability to set threshold limits and if the IT infrastructure was about to reach the threshold limits, NetGain Systems IT monitoring solution will send out emails or sms to respective IT person or team to take immediate action to prevent it from cascading into a major fault to be experienced by customers.
In the case of the DBS/POSB downtime, as connectivity is blamed for the cause, and affecting both ATMs, NETS and online transactions, the greatest suspect of fault would be one of the routers, switches or servers.
2. Map Out Complex IT Infrastructure With Simple Topology
DBS/POSB is a very large bank with more than 100 branches in Singapore and more than 1.9 million online users, one can expect the bank IT infrastructure to be extremely complex.
As such, complexity spells disaster when downtime struck.
The first step of fixing any downtime is to find the cause and followed by implementation of the solution. The final step, before announcing the green light to consumers, is to test the solution.
Often, complex IT infrastructure means the interlinkage can result in more issues when solution is implemented.
NetGain Systems IT monitoring solution automatically creates a network topology of the IT infrastructure when connected to the network. This shows the arrangement of the various elements of the IT infrastructure network, from links to nodes, in both logical and physical format.
When a problem is identified or a solution implemented, network topology lets’ the IT team to have a quick trace of how the device is interlinked to each other. This provides for faster and more efficient trouble shooting.
3. Spend Less Time Explaining To Management And More Time Fixing Problem
NetGain Systems simplifies complex IT infrastructure by providing a business view which shows a business hierarchy view to explain how the IT devices are interconnected to the business function and how the cause of the failure affects the business function.
For an example, say a Webserver has crossed threshold limits and is in critical alert. The IT team and business team can easily identify from the Business View feature that the cause of the failure is due to a memory issue in the connected Sun server. This allows the IT team to update management instantly and reduces the time spend firefighting and explaining to management the cause of the issue.
With this, more time can be spent fixing the problem and find a quicker resolution to ease customers’ satisfaction.
For a more detailed explanation of how IT Monitoring can prevent downtime, please email assistance@netgain-systems.com.
