Central securities depository Strate says a R2.8 million revamp of its IT environment is saving it R9 million over three years.
Chief operating officer Erna Solomon says last year's merger with the Universal Exchange Corporation (Unexcor) prompted a study of Strate's entire infrastructure and its IT procurement procedures.
While some of the companies' IT platforms were consolidated, Solomon and her team investigated the costs related to having two different sets of software in the mainframe environment.
"Our analysis of the consolidation of the two into one environment suggested that the best course of action was to buy a new machine to consolidate the two environments into one," Solomon says.
"As a consequence, we bought new software, which is proving to be more cost-effective than formerly."
A new mainframe cost the company R2.8 million, but the revamp has resulted in a cost saving of R9 million over the next three years, with ongoing savings after that.
Solomon says the saving is based on the reduced cost of software and no longer having to run two mainframes.
"And IBM support for the hardware was scheduled to lapse at the end of 2006. This problem now falls away," she says.
In addition, Strate is replacing its disaster recovery mainframe, which is expected to result in additional cost savings.
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