African Bank has seen quantifiably positive results with regard to a server standardisation project undertaken in 2001, regularly recording uptime figures of in excess of 99.99% across its server farm, a substantial increase from figures achieved over 2000 and 2001. The implementation has also resulted in a significantly more secure and robust environment.
The bank is continuing its standardisation drive by implementing approximately 800 HP Evo D500 PCs and N610 laptops nationwide, with the assistance of solutions provider, Datacentrix. The main objective of the project is to replace a number of "clone" PCs in use within the organisation with HP product.
Earlier this year, African Bank performed a cost analysis on the desktop side, revealing that expenditure related to the ongoing maintenance of the clone machines was substantially higher than that of the newer HP/Compaq machines. The desktop roll-out, which kicked off in February 2003, is due for completion by the end of August.
Says Roger Bentley, senior manager: IT facilities at African Bank: "The main reason behind our server standardisation was to put an N+1 redundancy policy in place, to ensure that should any business-critical application server fail, we could quickly cut over to one of the standby servers, reboot and be up and running in approximately half an hour.
"We also needed to stabilise our server environment with the installation of high quality, reliable products. Prior to the project, there were a number of concerns around the mix and match clone servers inherited from the various mergers and acquisitions over the years."
The first phase of server consolidation took place in 2001, with a concurrent SAN implementation to stabilise the bank`s IT environment, boosting stability and allowing for higher availability. In addition, a number of business-critical systems were moved to boot off the EMC SAN and a robotic backup environment was created.
"A second phase of consolidation took place in 2002, where African Bank moved various systems onto the recently acquired, but under-utilised HP/Compaq servers. This resulted in us being able to reduce the number of servers by one-third," Bentley adds. "In retrospect, we have certainly derived value from the server roll-out, in that the equipment is robust and dependable. Additionally, we now have a stable platform running Microsoft Windows 2000 Server and Advanced Server across almost all systems.
"Although our original project was carried out by SM NetworX, following the company`s acquisition by Datacentrix, we decided to stick with them. In previous dealings with Datacentrix, we carefully considered a number of facets of the business, including their BEE compliance, well-established footprint in the country and a proven track record in supply and support of the software and hardware that we utilise," he explains.
"Our existing successful relationship with African Bank and strong partnership with HP played an important role in our garnering of African Bank`s desktop project," says Penny Scott, divisional director at Datacentrix. "Datacentrix is HP`s largest South African partner, positioning us well for servicing customers through leading technology backed by the support of HP."
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