Digital GlobalSoft set up Digital Park, a 21-acre state-of-the-art campus at Bangalore. The campus is home to 600 software developers today and its two planned data centers (one an active physical center and the other a back-up disaster recovery center), which will provide managed hosting services to its Indian and global customers. The company has earmarked an investment of Rs 13 crore in setting up the data centers, installing a gigabit backbone network, and purchasing desktops. This would grow to house about 4,500 professionals as the company grows. Its plans include:

• Setting up two separate campus-LAN networks—one exclusively for Compaq and another for its other customers that are looking for e-infrastructure services. This is part of its larger objective of providing high-end infrastructure management solutions, application consulting and implementation, and expanding its offering in areas of security and network management for customers.

• Connecting its 600 software professionals and providing them multiple means of communications.

• Supporting its data centers’ needs of high bandwidth and redundancy.

• Implementing a scalable infrastructure that will support its expansion plans (4,500 professionals over the next two-three years).

Why New Infrastructure?
Digital GlobalSoft’s core business is IT solutions and services for enterprise and technology markets. Its business model relies on the offshore model of software development and its data centers for providing e-infrastructure services to its customers.

Digital GlobalSoft’s existing infrastructure comprised:

• LAN networks operational at the three digital office locations in Bangalore. The LAN switches were sourced from Enterasys/Nortel. The routers were sourced from Cisco.

• Traditional Nortel PBXs at these locations.

• VAX VMS mainframes and terminals with applications primarily based on Microsoft platforms.

• Major application used is SAP. Microsoft applications include as SQL Server, Outlook, NetBios over WAN to connect to central exchange servers, HTTP/Java-based applications, Microsoft Conference Server and Netmeeting and Citrix.

However, the current legacy infrastructure had some inherent limitations that did not support Digital GlobalSoft’s needs of:

• Multimedia applications

• A single security policy for each user regardless of where they access the network, and the ability to centrally administer security policies for all users of the network

• Network availability and scalability

• Lower total cost of ownership (TCO) for the infrastructure

• 24x7 redundant data center setup to ensure that its e-infrastructure clients were convinced that it could manage their services.

• Realization of its IT vision for service delivery

"In order to create alternative forms of communication in our growing, multi-location operations, we at Digital felt the need to go beyond legacy modes of communications such as mail and basic telephony and implement solutions such as desktop-to-desktop video, Net meeting, and streaming media which necessitated our opting for Convergence," says AN Rao, CIO, Digital GlobalSoft.

Going forward, the key challenges for Digital GlobalSoft clearly were greater scalability and decrease in time to deploy, greater reliability and higher time to service (high availability), ensuring anytime-anywhere connectivity and enhanced network security. And all this had to be done on a platform that brought in integration from design upwards and was highly manageable.

"The challenges get enhanced when one has to plan for a campus that grows over a period of time and forms the service delivery infrastructure for a diverse set of businesses—existing and new. Business should have the flexibility of multiple modes of connectivity to support the traffic and technology patterns that are unique to them. That really formed the design philosophy behind bringing up the campus infrastructure," adds Rao.

The Solution
Keeping in mind Digital GlobalSoft’s future plans (providing e-infrastructure services to its existing and potential customers), the need was to clearly invest in a converged IP-based infrastructure. For convergence at Digital GlobalSoft to become a reality, the new infrastructure was to provide not only a new world experience to its employees by delivering the benefits of voice, video, and data services but also ensure that its e-infrastructure customers were convinced of its capabilities to manage their infrastructure.

For this, Digital GlobalSoft opted for two separate campus LAN networks at its new Digital Park Campus—a Compaq Network exclusively for Compaq and a Digital Network for its other customers who would want e-infrastructure managed services. In addition, the infrastructure would be required to support the need for isolated secure networks for individual customers whose delivery might be from anywhere in the campus.

Hence the two campus LANs, which have been set up, have their own central resources such as core switch, server farm switch, servers, etc., which are located in the physical data center. This means that the physical data center has separate sections, one where the Compaq Network central resources and servers reside and the other where the Digital Network central resources reside currently and their future customers’ servers will reside. The Compaq Network connects the existing 600 professionals working on Compaq at Digital Park to their colleagues working on Compaq in the other three Bangalore offices through a WAN. The Digital Network currently connects through the WAN to the Digital Proximity Centre in Houston, Texas. The Digital Network will provide e-infrastructure managed services such as SAP support, VPN, security, and network management solutions among others to potential clients.

Both the campus LAN networks are based on Cisco’s AVVID architecture and deploy Cisco’s IP telephony and security solutions.

The networks are alike and are designed and configured as follows:

The campus LAN infrastructure is modelled and designed on Cisco’s multi-layer campus design, which is hierarchical and modular. It consists of a central core switching component where the emphasis is on high-performance multi-gigabit transport designed to deliver maximum of 256 Gbps speeds. The server farm module has high-density gigabit/fast Ethernet connectivity to servers and central resources. The distribution switch aggregates a lot of wiring closet access switches on the building floors and connects to the core on multiple redundant gigabit links (4 Gbps). The prime functionality of the distribution switch is to provide secure, policy-based access to users on access switches. The access switches provide connectivity to desktops and converged devices such as IP phones and support converged-applications like video, multicast, and data.

Digital uses Cisco Catalyst 6500 multi-services switch at the core, server farm and distribution layers of the network. It also consists of network analysis modules at the core for network analysis and management. The server farm switch has an intrusion detection module to protect critical servers in the data center. The access switches are Catalyst 4006s and Catalyst 3500XLs, capable of providing the needed back-plane speeds at the access level. That makes the multi-tier structure traffic engineered to cater to the potential data streams. All access switches reach the distribution switches on two alternate fiber paths and all distribution switches dual home into the data centers which provide fully replicated core and server farm switches. This makes for a highly available campus backbone that has enough path diversity.

Digital GlobalSoft has deployed Cisco IP telephony solutions based on the Cisco Call Manager and Cisco IP Phones in a closed user group (CUG). The IP Phones connect to the Catalyst access switches and provide an additional connection for user workstations. The server farm switches have E1 services module for legacy PSTN interconnection to IP telephony, when the solution is allowed, as well as provide digital signal processing (DSP) resources for conferencing with IP Phones.

Digital GlobalSoft uses Cisco 7200VXR and Cisco 3600 series multi-services router platform for running voice, video and data across the WAN. The Cisco 2600 series platform is used for remote access and Internet connectivity. The RAS users are authenticated with Cisco Secure ACS software. The PIX firewall is used for security and VPN services. Firewall and IDS are managed using the Cisco Secure Policy Manager Network Management Solution (NMS). The entire network infrastructure is managed with CiscoWorks LAN Management Suite.

Why Cisco?
Digital GlobalSoft says it opted for Cisco due to two primary reasons. One, the solution integration was at the design level, and two, Cisco is an end-to-end solutions provider. "Choosing Cisco as our technology partner was the culmination of rigorous testing, extensive competitive analysis, and third-party validation. Based on our thorough assessment, it was clear that Cisco had the technology, was clearly 6-12 months ahead of its competition in the thinking and development process and was focused on the end-to-end solution to meet our needs. Willingness to understand our needs from a business standpoint and the ability to custom architect a solution to align with those needs was an important facet that Cisco displayed consistently," explains Rao.

Cisco’s network infrastructure at Digital Park consists of carrier-class mutiservice routers, switches, IP telephony, firewalls, network management and analysis, intrusion detection and load balancing appliances. "Sourcing all networking solutions from Cisco helped us gain tight integration and the advantage of cross platform development. This means we could get IDS technology on switches and that gave us the flexibility we required," says Rao. He further adds, "Cisco’s platforms also offer QoS required for offering and controlling services across WAN."

Cisco Catalyst switches were chosen because they offered not only good performance and scalability but also the benefits of flexible technology, interfaces, services, security and convergence. The routers were chosen because of their multiservice capability and value-added security features like network-based application recognition and extended access control lists. Cisco PIX firewalls were chosen because of performance and enhanced security advantages of a dedicated appliance. Cisco IP telephony solution was chosen for its distinct advantages of rich set of applications and location independence and from the fact that it was born out of strong data capabilities.

Implementing the Solution
The overall network design was divided into three phases of implementation. The first phase consisted of installation of two parallel networks—the Digital Network and the Compaq Network. The details of the implementation were coordinated between the Digital and the Cisco team.

Benefits to Digital GlobalSoft Convergence at Digital Globalsoft set out to build not only a converged network to carry voice, video and data traffic but also one that would be scalable, secure, and reliable and would protect long-term investments in infrastructure. Some apparent benefits for Digital GlobalSoft being: Lower TCO—managing one network instead of two or three separate networks IP-based networks deliver the benefits of convergence—voice, video and data IP telephony solution based on the Call Manager are scalable and location independent. Deployment of the IP telephony solutions on the two networks drove down communication costs in a closed user group (CUG) Highly scalable networks—from the current 600 employees to the planned 4,500 employees over the next two to three years. Higher bandwidth availability for data traffic Secure VPNs End-to-end secure networks, along with easier manageability because of the Cisco Works Network Management Solution

"We decided to do initial staging of switches, routers, firewalls, intrusion detection, network management and Cisco Secure VPNs as a proof of concept that whatever was planned would work fine in the final implementation," adds Rao. The staging process began around August 2001. As a part of the initial staging process, a staging document was generated with a detailed IP addressing scheme for the initial phase and the subsequent phases. A detailed naming convention for all devices used in the design was evolved. The staging documentation also included configuration and troubleshooting for all equipment being used in the network. Templates were created for each configuration. From the templates, a customized configuration was generated for each device.

"There were enormous challenges which needed to be overcome to ensure a successful implementation. Critical applications like Microsoft Conferencing Services, VPNs, and IP telephony services were tested during the staging phase and most of the issues were resolved during the staging process itself" explains Rao.

Post the staging process, all configured equipment was shifted to the data center. Value-added services such as IDS and NAM were fine tuned after the deployment at the data center. The entire implementation was effectively carried out by the Digital team in consultation with the Cisco team.

"We have stringent measures to address security, both internal and external. Firewalls and intrusion detection systems have been deployed to cater to enhanced security. Cisco’s IDS technology on switches or firewall/IDS functionality on routers provide the flexibility in designing and deploying resources and has to a large extent helped address security. Policies define standards for secure network design and defensive actions, allowing network managers to incorporate a consistent multilayer defense strategy into their procedures." To sum up convergence at Digital GlobalSoft, "It has been a long winding journey since August 2001 but our commitment is reflected in the fact that the entire implementation has been completed in only 243 days (7.5 months) and looking back, I am glad we decided to partner with Cisco," says a beaming Rao.

Ch Srinivas Rao