SunGard Availability Services Data Center Consulting Guides Successful Consolidation And Migration Project At Whitney National Bank
SunGard Availability Services Data Center Consulting played a lead role in helping Whitney National Bank redesign and improve its information technology (IT) infrastructure. Working with SunGard Data Center Consulting, Whitney found it could reduce costs and create data center efficiencies by moving production and back-up systems from a third-party services provider to available space at the Whitney Data Center in Prattville, Ala.
This initiative involved migrating hundreds of physical and virtual server environments, including online banking production systems and back-up for all core systems outside of mainframe operations, as well as storage and networking equipment.
"We have launched a series of major initiatives to improve operational efficiencies across our company; and finding better ways to leverage our data centers is a key component," said Frank DeArmas, executive vice president, Operations & Technology at Whitney National Bank. "SunGard Data Center Consulting provided data center design and migration best practices expertise that will help us improve how we support business operations."
SunGard Data Center Consulting managed the design and retrofitting of Whitney's Prattville data center to make it ready for the new equipment, reconfiguration of systems to consolidate and add efficiencies to the IT infrastructure, and systems migration from the co-location facility in Lithia Springs, Ga. to Whitney's site.
"A top challenge in retrofitting a data center is the majority of the focus needs to be on the facility – not technology," said Scott Erlichman, senior vice president, Information Technology at Whitney National Bank, which operates in the five-state Gulf Coast region. "SunGard provided valuable expertise in this regard, addressing important questions like: what capacity does our HVAC environment need; do we need to add a generator to ensure adequate back-up power; and how high should the ceilings be for our fire suppression system?"
In addition to building out the Prattville facility, another important project step was commissioning the facility for the new IT systems environment. Prior to the migration, Whitney and SunGard tested all the computing components at full-load to ensure everything worked as planned. Then, just before the move, the SunGard team confirmed the accuracy of all network, system, application and storage interdependencies, and updated the data center knowledge base with changes as needed.
To manage the data center migration, SunGard set up "command and control" centers in both Lithia Springs and Prattville. This team worked in concert with Whitney to manage resources and monitor move activities, including coordinating with Whitney storage vendors EMC and HP. As part of the data center move, Whitney server and storage systems were reconfigured in their data center racks from what was used in Lithia Springs to enable more efficient management.
The physical move of the data center equipment took three days from start to finish when all systems were back up and running at their new Prattville location.
"Whitney Bank executives and the Bank's IT team were very hands on throughout the data center design and migration processes, and their involvement was essential to project success," said Mickey Zandi, practice area managing principal, consulting services at SunGard Availability Services.
About Whitney National Bank
With $11.7B in assets, the Whitney Holding Corporation (WTNY), through its banking subsidiary Whitney National Bank, serves the five-state Gulf Coast region stretching from Houston, Texas; across southern Louisiana and the coastal region of Mississippi; to central and south Alabama; the panhandle of Florida; and the Tampa Bay metropolitan area of Florida. For more information, visit Whitney Bank online at whitneybank.com.
About SunGard Availability Services
SunGard Availability Services provides disaster recovery services, managed IT services, information availability consulting services and business continuity management software to more than 10,000 customers in North America and Europe. With five million square feet of datacenter and operations space, SunGard assists IT organizations across virtually all industry and government sectors to prepare for and recover from emergencies by helping them minimize their computer downtime and optimize their uptime. Through direct sales and channel partners, we help organizations ensure their people and customers have uninterrupted access to the information systems they need in order to do business. For more information, visit www.availability.sungard.com.
About SunGard
SunGard is one of the world's leading software and IT services companies. SunGard serves more than 25,000 customers in more than 70 countries.
SunGard provides software and processing solutions for financial services, higher education and the public sector. SunGard also provides disaster recovery services, managed IT services, information availability consulting services and business continuity management software.
With annual revenue exceeding $5B, SunGard is ranked 435 on the Fortune 500 and is the largest privately held business software and services company on the Forbes list of private businesses. Based on information compiled by Datamonitor, SunGard is the third largest provider of business applications software after Oracle and SAP. Continuity, Insurance & Risk has recognized SunGard as service provider of the year an unprecedented six times. For more information, please visit SunGard at www.sungard.com.
SOURCE: SunGard