At a time when the domestic and global markets have become seemingly more unpredictable than ever, the role of a financial services company has grown even more complex than meets the eye. Orbis Financial Corporation addresses these challenges by strategically steering ahead with precision and agility—leveraging smart and lean technology solutions such as NComputing.

Orbis Financial Corporation Ltd is a Gurgaon (Haryana, India) based non-banking financial services company that made its foray in the financial services domain in 2009. Since then it is successfully conceptualizing and offering a range of forward looking services designed and customised to equip the investors across segments to efficiently manage their investing operations securely.

Given the growing market volatility and complex processing requirements, Orbis is focused on meeting the growing demands of investors by offering premium investor services. This it does by combining the best technology solutions and applications, automating processes and establishing necessary controls and procedures to create value for its stakeholders.

Migration from the old to the new

As part of this strategy, the company deployed NComputing’s affordable and energy-efficient L-series virtual desktops, which addressed the key IT challenges that Orbis was faced with till not so long ago. The company’s existing IT infrastructure had gone obsolete overtime. There were nearly 42 thin clients with an average age of 4 to 6 years. The hardware of these devices was bulky, with moving parts. Due to their big size, these devices couldn’t be mounted behind the monitors, and had to be kept on the desk. Invariably, there were instances of these devices falling on the floor and getting damaged. As a consequence, users called for IT support every now and then. Besides, there was no way to centrally manage these devices.

Also, these thin clients were only compatible with the Windows XP operating system—the operating system that has already gone obsolete. This posed operational issues as users couldn’t perform financial transactions involving reading of digital certificates. Hence, the company decided to replace these outdated devices and migrate to the Windows 7 platform.

According to Mani Kant Singh R, Head—IT & Security, Orbis Financial Corporation Ltd, “The key requirements were—to upgrade the existing IT set up with a solution that was state-of-the-art, easy to deploy, monitor and use, and, came with good customer support service. Orbis considered many software-based thin client solutions, but eventually deployed NComputing’s L-series desktop virtualization solution that fitted the company’s requirements like a glove. The solution delivers great ROI, is simple to deploy, scale and manage.”

IT’s sorted

Mani enumerates the benefits that Orbis is observing after deploying the NComputing solution:

Flexible and rugged: The NComputing L300 devices bundle a sophisticated SoC (system on chip) form factor, are sleek and immensely rugged with no moving parts. The devices come with a docket and can be mounted behind the monitor. This clears up space on the desk. What’s more, since it is a plug and play system, it renders a lot of flexibility of use.

Savings that are evident: By opting for NComputing, we have saved over 50 percent on the hardware cost, and over 90 percent on maintenance cost and support time. Power and backup cost savings are also noteworthy.

Central management: Since the NComputing devices can be managed and updated centrally, it saves the support team a lot of time and effort.

Green IT: These NComputing devices have no moving parts such as fan, and do not emit any heat. So, the CO2 emission is extremely low.

Performance par excellence: Deploying NComputing has improved speed and performance of PCs and this has in-turn improved employee productivity. Users now get to experience uninterrupted, hassle-free PC-like experience.

Perfect mapping of requirements: The NComputing team mapped our requirements extensively, and, from its array of products, suggested the right solution. The NComputing team adopted an optimized selling practice rather than overselling their products to us.

Agile customer support: The most noteworthy thing about the deployment has been the support that the NComputing team has provided to us so far. Whenever we highlighted any issue or shared any requirement, our query got addressed within 24 hours. The NComputing team is also keen to provide support to us within the promised timeframe, even at odd hours. Their attitude has surpassed our expectations.”

Going forward...

When Orbis decided to deploy 10 NComputing workstations, like any financial services company, it wanted to tread cautiously and first test the waters before taking a leap in to it. However, today, the Orbis team is completely satisfied with the solution and plans to gradually replace its obsolete computing infrastructure entirely with NComputing’s desktop virtualization solution. Mani concludes, “We strongly recommend other organizations to explore NComputing’s revolutionary technology. The solutions are perfect, not only for startups but any organization requiring a computing solution for running mission-critical applications.”