Banking on data integrity
23
1-2-1 DR P
Raising Unified Network (RUN)’s Dr. Peter Werth explains the
WAN optimisation installation for Italy’s Raifessen Banks.
Raiffeisen Banks, part of the ageable only with high costs Dr. Werth gives some idea of
Raiffeisen Organization, has in time and resources. the problems the bank was
ETER
installed 150 Riverbed Furthermore slow network experiencing: “A typical exam-
Steelhead appliances and the connectivity led to sometimes ple of problems that occurred
Riverbed Central Management to inconsistent data in the frequently was the problem
WER
Console (CMC) as part of its branch offices. Backup solu- with the local backup stor-
TH
ongoing strategy to improve tions over WAN Links were ages due to HW Failures…
access to real-time data and not usable and therefore not With the implementation of
increase worker productivity, considered. The local backup Riverbed Appliances we had
while controlling IT costs. The solution per branch led again consolidated the Servers in
speed provided by Riverbed to more resource overhead campus and therefore we
has allowed Raiffeisen Banks and costs.” were able to overcome this
to centralize its IT infrastruc- specific problem.”
ture and remove 150 servers Dr.. Werth continues:
from its local branches. In “However, for 190 offices To manage this dispersed
addition, Raiffeisen Banks’ throughout the Northern architecture, Raiffeisen has
bandwidth utilization has Italian region, this strategy outsourced its IT services to
dropped by over 87 percent. had become unmanageable. RUN. “The main challenge was
Due to the fact of technical to consolidate data from 190
The Federation of Raiffeisen and geographical limits the local offices to just 40 head
Cooperatives is a group of bandwidth capacity of the offices and a centralized data
cooperative entities based in branches are not always in center. This would provide a
Italy, incorporating banking, the range of DSL speed and more robust architecture, and
agriculture, energy and social bandwidth upgrades leads to would allow users to have
services. The banking and high costs with not always constant and up-to-date
insurance services are man- successful results for the end access to files,” explains Dr..
aged by Raiffeisen Banks with user. Werth. “However, we wanted
a total of 190 offices through- to find a solution that would
out the Alto Adige province in Data between sites was not not involve an increase in
Northern Italy, employing always consistent and on bandwidth costs.”
1,750 people and with a occasion was not updated.
turnover of E9.15bn. Backups were performed Dr. Werth continues: “The
Raiffeisen Banks outsources locally, resulting in high costs; type of traffic seen at the
its IT services to Raising maintaining the servers was bank can be broken down as
Unified Network S.p.A (RUN). also time-consuming and follows: CIFS (about 80%) –
costly. For mobile employees LN (about 10%) – HTTP (about
Raiffeisen Banks had previ- the problem was even more 8%) – other (about 2%). The
ously pursued a strategy to widespread, with users losing increasing need of bandwidth
install servers in each branch valuable time trying to down- for future applications and
location. Dr.. Werth explains: load emails and files.” services like centralized data
“The infrastructure was man- storage, centralized backup
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