Addressing its requirement for an automated and centrally administered desktop management system, Imperial Bank has successfully rolled-out Attachmate`s NetWizard across its branches nationwide.
The product meets the bank`s requirement for automating desktop management processes across its remote branches in Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Durban, Bloemfontein and Pretoria, as well as two head office operations based in Johannesburg.
"NetWizard offers an integrated feature set and rapid deployment capabilities which enabled us to complete the roll out to an network environment comprising approximately 200 users in less than three weeks," says Emma Wilson, account manager at Attachmate SA.
The primary usage is for policy control, involving remote support of workstations, software distribution, metering and licensing, as well as hardware and software asset management for audit and inventory purposes.
"Previously, Imperial did not have an automated desktop management solution in place and relied on having to fly technical support staff to various locations around the country to handle any problems that arose. Since the implementation of NetWizard, we have not had a need to deploy any technical staff remotely," says Marc Schmidt, assistant GM, IT at Imperial Bank.
"We are currently able to successfully deal with all remote problems 100 percent of the time. The product has been in use since late last year and proved to be of major use during our Y2K compliance process. We were able to distribute any necessary patches, fixes and updates very neatly from one central point at our Edenvale head office to all remote sites," he says.
Imperial has a typical banking environment with all core financial systems running on an AS/400 platform. Intel-based workstations and NT servers typically serve other departmental applications.
"The fact that we could deploy NetWizard on all the bank`s platforms was a major advantage as a single product could access all applications and platforms without requiring anything else," says Schmidt.
"We have achieved a synergy that is extremely attractive as we can manage our entire environment from one central location. NetWizard also ensures that we are also able to use network bandwidth to maximum potential, as bandwidth is not absorbed by unnecessary house keeping. The product does most of the work on the local segment, and this information is then passed onto remote locations with minimal impact on the wide area network," Schmidt concludes.
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