American Express Foreign Exchange connects with DiData

American Express Foreign Exchange, one of SA`s leading forex providers, aims to reduce costs and increase profits through an intelligent network infrastructure project managed by global systems integrator, Dimension Data.

The solution will provide the necessary connectivity and integration required by financial services companies in today`s marketplace, while ensuring IT readiness to support future growth.

"Margins are small in this industry and it is imperative that we use technology to drastically reduce the costs of doing business," says Darren Jenkins-Ferrett, director of American Express Foreign Exchange.

The project involves a local area network (LAN) - ready to support voice, data and video, Citrix, Windows 2000 Active Directory and a storage area network (SAN) at American Express Foreign Exchange`s head office in Braamfontein, Johannesburg.

Jenkins-Ferrett says the project represents a major investment for the American Express Foreign Exchange and he is confident it will result in numerous benefits. These include greater network availability, a real-time online environment and resultant enhancements in employee productivity.

The infrastructure will also enable the company to explore e-business technologies such as Web-enabled applications, electronic kiosks, security and potentially voice over IP (VOIP).

"The key driver for the project, however, was reduced total cost of ownership," he says. The need for an intelligent infrastructure became evident when American Express Foreign Exchange opted for a new core business application.

"We realised we therefore needed a whole new campus, including IP-ready LAN, storage area network, thin client application and new operating system. And we needed it implemented rapidly, so we could quickly realise the benefits of the new business solution," explains Jenkins-Ferrett.

"We decided to appoint one strategic IT partner with the skills across both connectivity and integration rather than a number of vendors specialising in different areas," says Jos'e Rodrigues, American Express Foreign Exchange`s IT manager.

"We wanted to partner with a company that had depth of resources and would be able to resolve any problems quickly," says Jenkins-Ferrett. "Dimension Data proposed the best solution, effectively combining design, product, skills and support into a single project."

"The deadlines introduced by the business application implementation were enormous, and time had to be cut at each step," says Rodrigues. "The project involved some major re-engineering, and several elements had to happen at once. We put our faith in Dimension Data to provide an end-to-end solution and the company has really come through."

The solution consisted of a Cisco Local Area network to replace the existing Cabletron network; a Compaq SAN; Cisco firewall, Citrix XP and Windows 2000 to replace the existing NT operating system.

"Citrix XP is centrally managed, offers low TCO and has low bandwidth requirements," says Rodrigues. "We have gone the storage area network route to ensure high availability, high redundancy, clustering and consistency of all data structures. The configuration also allows our business to scale vertically when it grows. We will not have to scale horizontally by adding more hardware."

"We chose convergence technology as it makes sense to have an integrated network," says Jenkins-Ferrett. "We have a lot of internal talk traffic and the technology will definitely result in cost-savings.

"We are also looking at introducing a smart security system to run over the WAN. Our closed circuit television system can then be centrally managed over the WAN. We have already piloted this in one of our larger branches."