ABSA`s new customer segmentation business model has spawned the purchase of one of the world`s fastest Unix servers on the market, the IBM RS/6000 S80 and an IBM ESS Model F20 disk subsystem - known in the trade as Shark.
"We needed expanded capacity to support our data warehouse requirements, driven by the customer focussed approach," says Tertius Haak, assistant general manager, group IT at ABSA. "This entails drawing data from the entire group`s underlying information systems."
The Shark, purchased from JSE-listed e-infrastructure specialists Faritec, has a 16 GB cache and 3.3 TB of disk space, which can grow to 11.2 TB. Currently the ABSA Group`s data warehouse data occupies just over one TB, and Haak expects this to double as the new information management systems are implemented. The installation took place in July and the system will go live in December 2000.
"We will be able to determine customer preferences, do profitability analyses, examine potential alternative service strategies for each client and have the ability to determine additional customer requirements," he says. "This will facilitate the personalised banking experience crucial to our new business plans."
ABSA`s existing infrastructure was five years old and had reached its capacity limit. It had to be replaced with a scalable system, a criteria the IBM RS/6000, with its twelve processors and 32 GB memory, scalable to 24 processors and 64 GB memory, fitted well.
"The Shark is open system storage which can connect to any environment, be it Unix, mainframe or NT," says Steve Moriarty, account executive at Faritec. "Its speed is world class and its data integration ability precisely meets ABSA`s data demands," he says.
The multi-million Rand investment will equip ABSA with enough computing power to drive all medium-term growth plans, simultaneously ensuring that the fullest advantage is taken of all existing IT infrastructure.
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