Many organizations are undergoing digital transformation initiatives to modernize their operations, improve efficiency, and stay competitive. This involves adopting new technologies, implementing cloud solutions, leveraging data analytics, and optimizing business processes. Enterprise IT solutions and services play a crucial role in enabling and managing these digital transformation efforts.
Acute Informatics Pvt. Ltd. is a reputable company specializing in Fintech, Core Banking Solutions development, Project Mentoring, and IT consulting. They have achieved CMMi Level 5 assessment and hold certifications such as ISO/IEC 27001:2013, ISO 27017:2015, ISO 27018:2019, ISO 9001:2015, ISO 20000-1:2018, and ISO 22301:2019. With a strong focus on delivering value to clients worldwide, the company employs a Global Delivery Model and possesses the ability to provide services from multiple locations.
Established in 2005, Acute Informatics aims to excel in areas such as Core Banking, Digital Banking, Fintech, Micro-Finance, Financial Inclusion, Staff Augmentation, Systems Integration, Database Administration, System Administration, Implementation, Testing, and Support. Among their notable achievements are the successful implementation of their flagship products, namely “EasyBankCore®,” an enterprise Core Banking Solution (CBS) accessible through a web browser, and “Digi.X™,” a comprehensive suite of digital channels. These products have been deployed in over 120 banks across India.
Transforming Banking Operations
Acute Informatics Pvt. Ltd. has a proven track record of successfully implementing Core Banking Solutions (CBS) for over 17 years, with more than 120 successful deployments. They have hosted 35+ banks on the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), handling CBS primary operations as well as business continuity planning and disaster recovery (BCP/DR) operations. Their CBS solution is cost-effective while maintaining high quality, seamlessly integrating with digital banking channels through their DiGi.X™ platform. It offers the lowest capital expenditure (CAPEX) and operational expenditure (OPEX) compared to competitors in the industry.
Acute Informatics’ CBS offering is future-ready, being native-cloud enabled and multi-tenant software as a service (SaaS), with BCP/DR capabilities. Their EasyBankCore® solution has served a wide range of financial organizations, including co-operative banks (urban and district central co-operative banks), local area banks, foreign private banks (scheduled commercial banks), payment banks, microfinance organizations, savings and credit cooperative organizations (SACOOs), and non-banking financial companies (NBFCs).
What sets EasyBankCore® apart in the banking vertical is its centralized integrated retail and corporate banking capabilities, including trade finance, treasury, and risk management. It is natively integrated with the latest digital banking channels, leveraging cutting-edge technologies such as Java, Oracle Database, and cloud infrastructure. The solution also offers robust business continuity planning and disaster recovery (BCP/DR) features.
Acute Informatics excels in Oracle database management, providing expertise in security, performance tuning, and administration. They possess a unique combination of skills in product development and system integration, allowing them to deliver comprehensive solutions. With their rich experience in database administration services, BCP/DR consulting, cyber security, and network orchestration, Acute Informatics serves as a one-stop solution for customers. They have a team of 10+ engineers who are certified in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).
Meet the Chief
Chirag K. Patel, the Co-Founder and CEO of Acute Informatics, brings over 20 years of experience in software development and systems integration to his role. He is responsible for leading the Product Development Group, overseeing strategic planning and alliances, managing product pre-sales, and ensuring smooth overall operations at Acute Informatics.
Chirag holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree, which provides him with a strong foundation in business and finance. With his extensive experience and diverse skill set, he plays a vital role in the success and growth of Acute Informatics.
As a member of the entrepreneurial leadership team, Chirag is involved in key assignments such as driving product and solution development, acquiring new customers, spearheading process improvement initiatives, and overseeing talent acquisition efforts. His expertise particularly shines in the fintech segment, where he leads the pre-sales activities.
Empowering Digital Banking
Acute Informatics has been at the forefront of revolutionizing digital banking by providing enterprise fintech and banking solutions that give organizations a competitive edge. With a strong client base of over 150 active engagements and a dedicated team of 420+ professionals, Acute Informatics offers solutions aimed at enhancing operational efficiency, driving innovation, and reducing costs.
The COVID-19 crisis has accelerated the adoption of cloud computing in the banking industry, leading to increased investment in cloud infrastructure and development. Recognizing the growing need for enhanced application security and cost savings, Acute Informatics made the strategic decision to migrate their banking solutions and workloads from on-premise deployments to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
Through their Software as a Service (SaaS) model, Acute Informatics enables banks to securely store and access their data from anywhere. This approach offers several key benefits:
- Scalability and flexibility
- Cost savings as compared to On-Premise / Capex Model.
- Advanced security.
- Data loss prevention.
- Guaranteed Uptime with SLAs
By embracing a SaaS approach, Acute Informatics empowers banks with scalability, cost savings, advanced security, data protection, and reliable service availability, contributing to their overall success in the digital banking landscape.
Seamless Migration to the Cloud
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) offers a comprehensive set of tools and architecture designed to facilitate a seamless transition from on-premise to cloud environments. With improved automation and built-in security features, OCI mitigates threats and enables superior migration and cost-effectiveness. Acute Informatics has made significant investments in OCI tools and certifications to leverage its benefits.
OCI provides Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings as part of its second-generation cloud services. Oracle Autonomous Database services, built on OCI, utilize a high-speed network that enables Acute Informatics to rapidly deploy mission-critical applications and support continuous innovation.
Acute Informatics adopted a “lift and shift” strategy for migrating their legacy applications to the cloud. This approach involves taking the applications offline from the on-premise servers and then uploading them to the cloud. Whether using IaaS, PaaS, or SaaS, the lift and shift approach allows Acute Informatics to migrate applications without the need for significant modifications.
This strategy has proven to be cost-effective for Acute Informatics in migrating their banking applications from on-site servers to cloud servers. With lift and shift, the applications are uploaded to the cloud storage, enabling banks to access and process their core banking system (CBS) data. This method allows operations on cloud-based data without solely relying on an internet connection, making the application accessible to a wider range of banking businesses with slower internet speeds. Once the applications and data are uploaded, Acute Informatics can further enhance the cloud-based applications using the lift-and-shift approach to add new features for users.
By leveraging OCI’s tools, certifications, and the lift and shift strategy, Acute Informatics ensures a smooth and cost-effective migration of their banking applications to the cloud while maintaining data security and performance.
Innovative Banking Solutions
Acute’s Banking applications are developed with a focus on innovation, incorporating cutting-edge features such as exceptional scalability and availability, seamless integration of governance and control mechanisms, and reliability that is reinforced by comprehensive service level agreements (SLAs) throughout the entire process. Acute aligns with Oracle’s cloud mission, which goes beyond traditional boundaries to accommodate emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), the Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain, and advanced security measures.
Overcoming Challenges and Embracing Transformation
Acute encountered several challenges during the migration to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). These challenges include:
- The impact of the pandemic: The pandemic has compelled banks to prioritize cloud adoption for ensuring uninterrupted business operations and continuity.
- Security and compliance risks: Banks have traditionally perceived security and compliance risks as significant barriers to cloud adoption. Additionally, there has been a lack of understanding regarding the costs involved and unrealistic expectations of return on investment (RoI). Legacy IT infrastructure, a deficiency in cloud governance mechanisms, and a shortage of digital skills have also posed major challenges.
- Digital transformation demands: With the rise of digitization, banks have faced the challenge of providing 24/7/365 uptime and achieving a quick time to market for digital banking channels, along with launching new products and services.
In response to these challenges, banks have recognized the potential benefits of cloud adoption. They now view cloud as a means to scale capacity, automate processes, accelerate time to market, foster innovation, and develop new business models like open banking and banking-as-a-service. This shift in perspective aligns with how fintech companies have utilized digital-native business models to drive innovation in various areas of financial services, including payments, lending, insurance, and wealth management.
Acute experienced a significant turning point when it adopted Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and successfully migrated to the cloud. This transition, coupled with the development of various digital banking channels, marked a major milestone for the company. It enabled Acute to leverage the benefits of cloud computing, such as improved scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency.
Reasons to Choose Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure is designed to cater to the needs of enterprises that prioritize improved performance, cost-effectiveness, and seamless migration of their applications to the cloud. There are several reasons why customers choose Oracle Cloud Infrastructure over other cloud service providers:
Firstly, customers can leverage a wide range of cloud services in the public cloud. They have the flexibility to select from multiple Oracle DB Options based on their specific workloads.
Secondly, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure allows customers to migrate and operate any workload as-is, including Oracle databases and applications, VMware, or bare metal servers. This ensures compatibility and ease of transition to the Oracle Cloud platform.
Thirdly, customers can easily implement robust security controls and automation mechanisms to prevent misconfiguration errors and adhere to security best practices. This enhances the overall security posture of their applications and data.
Fourthly, Oracle offers comprehensive service level agreements (SLAs) that cover performance, availability, and manageability of services. This minimizes risks for customers and ensures that Oracle takes responsibility for delivering reliable services.
Lastly, workloads hosted on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure can achieve superior performance at a significantly reduced cost compared to other alternatives. This cost-effectiveness is accompanied by compliance with regulatory guidelines such as the RBI guidelines on outsourcing financial services and data localization requirements. Therefore, it is high time to embrace Oracle Cloud Infrastructure as a facilitator of security and compliance, rather than perceiving it as a barrier.
Staying Ahead of the Curve
Mr. Patel shares valuable advice and insights on staying ahead of the competition in today’s market. His recommendations for businesses include continual innovation, understanding the market and customers, building a strong brand, focusing on quality, service, and value, employing and motivating talented individuals, fostering a culture of lifelong learning, and exploring strategic partnership opportunities.
For budding entrepreneurs, he advises cultivating passion and vision, being willing to take risks, creating flexible and backup plans, finding a mentor, preparing for sacrifices, avoiding comparisons with peers, being persistent and trusting oneself, executing and starting the business, embracing work-life balance, and practicing honesty and transparency with stakeholders.
Vision for the Future
The modern world is currently experiencing significant changes, particularly in how the fintech industry evaluates itself in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Irrespective of their size, financial organizations have numerous opportunities in such a scenario. To ensure the future viability of the fintech sector, key areas of focus will be innovation in contactless payments, effective integration of the Internet of Things (IoT) into existing product lines, and the development of multi-service financial platforms.
A strong emphasis is placed on personalization in Acute, especially considering that the company’s customers come from diverse locations. Consequently, the company needs to scale its operations to comply with regional regulatory standards. In order to provide flexible and practical solutions, the company is fully prepared to utilize advanced data analytics features, recognizing that fintech is a technology that is still maturing. The primary theme of its plan is customization, catering to the specific needs of both clients and end-users.
Acute is actively engaged in educating traditional financial players to embrace and enhance technology in their operations, enabling faster and more efficient financial services. It has several significant updates and upcoming product launches on the horizon.
