Computer Associates International, Inc (CA) announced that South African financial services leader Absa Group Limited is implementing Unicenter to manage its critical systems, applications and network management integration resources and optimise service levels while controlling technology ownership costs across the enterprise.
Absa Group Limited, which is listed on the Johannesburg Securities Exchange, is the controlling company of a major financial services group in SA that has assets of approximately $25 billion.
Unicenter provides Absa with real-time, proactive event and availability monitoring across its diverse platforms and applications, which include SAP R/3, IBM WebSphere, and Lotus Notes, as well as Oracle and other business-critical databases. This diverse infrastructure supports the execution of more than 400 financial transactions per second.
Absa`s decision to standardise on Unicenter was driven by the requirement to gain an enterprise-wide, business-level view of IT performance. "We needed to get IT management out of our various engine rooms and onto the bridge," said Mark Basnett, technical support manager, Absa`s Group Technology Services Division. "By doing so, we knew we would become more effective at maximising service levels for all of our key applications while at the same time increasing the overall efficiency of our technical operations."
Working closely with CA Services, Basnett and his team have built an impressive, state-of-the-art command centre at the company`s headquarters in Johannesburg. Intuitive, highly graphical consoles in the command centre provide Absa technicians with the alerting, reporting and data analysis they need to pro-actively assess conditions in the IT infrastructure and immediately take remedial action when required. From database performance to network system utilisation, the seamlessly integrated Unicenter components enable instantaneous access to critical information.
"The command centre has had a significant impact on the bank`s IT systems awareness," said Basnett. "With so much of our business activity now dependent on both internal and outward-facing applications, the continuous monitoring capabilities of Unicenter of our end-to-end environment ensure that we achieve maximum availability which is inline with business performance."
Basnett noted that such monitoring is particularly important in the Internet world. "Management of e-business performance can easily deteriorate into crisis-driven firefighting. With Unicenter, this doesn`t happen."
Absa uses Unicenter to monitor 36 000 distinct infrastructure objects and plans to further expand its implementation to encompass additional functional capabilities and more extensive automation of operational tasks.
"The scale and breadth of Absa`s Unicenter implementation demonstrates CA`s ongoing leadership in the IT management market space," said Dan Van der Westhuizen, regional manager, CA Africa and Middle East. "We`re delighted to partner with Absa to address their complex challenges quickly and effectively."
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