Customer Solution Case Study
/ Banca Intesa Standardizes Messaging Infrastructure, Enhances Services
Overview
Country or Region:Italy
Industry:Financial Services
Customer Profile
Banca Intesa, in Italy, employs more than 57,000 people, serves 11 million customers, and operates 3,700 branches. It has a million telephone banking and home banking customers and 100,000 corporate customers.
Business Situation
The bank wanted to standardise its diverse legacy e-mail systems, which included IBM Lotus Notes, Webmail on Linux, and IMAP, to reduce administration and improve messaging services.
Solution
Banca Intesa deployed Microsoft® Exchange Server 2003 with Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003 and Microsoft Office Outlook Web Access. It has migrated more than 33,000 mailboxes to the new system in two months.
Benefits
Ability to meet future messaging requirements
Reduced IT administration
Enhanced e-mail services and mobile working opportunities
Integrated system supports value-adding development projects
Support from a leading technology partner / “The new system will support access to e-mails and calendar information via mobile phones or Pocket PCs, helping users become more productive.”
Mirco Carriglio, Distributed Technologies Manager, Banca Intesa
Banca Intesa launched in Italy following the merger of three major credit companies. It standardised its messaging infrastructure by deploying Microsoft® Exchange Server 2003. The decision was based on the Microsoft solution’s ease of administration, integration with existing systems, low total cost of ownership, and enterprise-class support. Using the new e-mail infrastructure has greatly enhanced messaging services for mobile working, and the integration with Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 reduces IT management and supports centralised provisioning of user accounts. Banca Intesa migrated 33,000 mailboxes in less than two months, rationalising the management of the service, increasing its reliability, enabling new user functionalities, and opening a path for new collaboration services.
Situation
Banca Intesa, part of the Intesa Group, is one of Italy’s leading financial institutions. It was created after the merger of major credit companies Cariplo and AmbroVeneto in 1998. In 2001, Banca Commerciale Italiana also integrated with the company. The bank now employs more than 57,000 people, serves 11 million customers, and operates 3,700 branches. It has a million telephone banking and home banking customers and more than 100,000 corporate customers.
The three companies that merged to form Banca Intesa worked with complex IT systems to support their business activities. As a result, the bank was left with a disparate computing environment that was time consuming and costly to manage. To address this issue, the company’s information services department launched a large-scale project to roll out a single, integrated IT environment. It planned to migrate more than 60,000 workstations across the group to a new centralised infrastructure.
In addition, the department wanted to standardise the existing messaging infrastructures. Mirco Carriglio, Distributed Technologies Manager, Banca Intesa, says: “Historically, 28,000 of our user mailboxes ran on Webmail. We used Lotus Notes for an additional 10,000 and IMAP Cyrus/Linux for 500 mailboxes at some our foreign branches. We had deployed another open-source technology called MailHUB to integrate these diverse mail systems.”
Just like the general computing environment, the messaging infrastrurcture was very complex to integrate and administer, increasing IT management costs at the bank. It was also difficult and expensive to roll out new messaging functionality on a group-wide basis. Carriglio says: “At Banca Intesa, e-mail is considered a mission-critical technology. We needed new tools to improve the quality of our messaging services and enhance administration. Another key goal was to streamline development and deployment of new messaging functionality such as mobile access to e-mail and calendar information from outside the office. The only way to achieve these goals was to roll out a standardised group-wide system that was reliable and economical.”
Solution
Before rolling out its new messaging environment, Banca Intesa conducted an in-depth evaluation of competing e-mail technologies and took advice from independent analysts. After this investigation, the company chose to deploy Microsoft® Exchange Server 2003 communication and collaboration server, which is part of Microsoft Windows Server System™ integrated server software, instead of competing open-source e-mail solutions. Carriglio says: “We were looking for a market leader that could guarantee a progressive roadmap for the new messaging system. We also wanted technology that is simple to administer and integrate, and which doesn’t require expensive maintenance. Enterprise-class support was also a prerequisite and a key factor in our decision to deploy Microsoft technology.”
At the time, the Banca Intesa network already supported the Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 operating system, the foundation of Windows Server System. Having the latest-version operating system made deploying Exchange Server 2003 quick and easy. It meant IT staff could use the Active Directory®, directory service, a key element of Windows Server 2003, to centrally manage inboxes in Exchange Server 2003 and authenticate users accessing both the internal network and ExchangeServer 2003 messaging services.
During the deployment phase of the project, IT staff migrated 33,000 mailboxes to the new infrastructure and rolled out the Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003 messaging and collaboration client on 8,000 desktop machines. An additional 25,000 workstations access mail services using Microsoft Office Outlook Web Access. Exchange Server 2003 is hosted on a server cluster located at the bank’s server farm.
Carriglio says: “We rolled out the new technology in just two months, minimising disruption for our end users. During this time, we received invaluable support from Microsoft Services and professionals from Reply, a Microsoft Certified Partner. In the end, migration was completed a few days ahead of schedule, without causing interruptions to normal working activities. The reliability of the service is guaranteed by Microsoft Premier Support, which provides a dedicated team to monitor our systems.”
Benefits
Ability to Meet Future Messaging Requirements
The new infrastructure incorporates instruments that monitor and analyse e-mail traffic. These have shown that the Exchange Server 2003 system manages 200,000 messages per day and stores more than four terabytes of data. This kind of information helps the Banca Intesa IT team manage the messaging environment and plan for future development projects more effectively. Carriglio says: “Now, we can see the size and performance of our e-mail environment and predict future requirements. This means we make the necessary investments to ensure effective storage and messaging in the future.”
Reduced IT Administration Delivers Savings
Using Exchange Server 2003, Banca Intesa can streamline management of its messaging systems. Administration of the architecture, which was previously handled by the application management team, is now conducted by four staff members.
Carriglio says: “Management of the messaging environment is much simpler with Microsoft Exchange Server 2003. In addition, integration with Active Directory allows helpdesk staff to provision new users and change user access rights themselves. As a result, the entire system can now be managed by just four dedicated ‘mail managers’, freeing members of the application management team to focus on more value-added tasks.”
Enhanced Mail Services and Mobile Working Opportunities
The new e-mail system has increased user satisfaction and delivered opportunities for new messaging functionality, including mobile working. Carriglio says: “The new system will support access to e-mails and calendar information via mobile phones or Pocket PCs, helping users become more productive.”
Traditional e-mail services, such as sending attachments or distributing meeting requests, is also much easier and more efficient with the new system. Carriglio says: “All our messaging functions are much faster with Microsoft technology than they were previously. The time savings our employees are experiencing will ultimately result in significant return on investment.”
Integrated System Supports Value-Added Development Projects
The new messaging infrastructure, built on Exchange Server 2003 and Windows Server 2003, provides a solid foundation for value-adding development projects. New collaborative services, which make use of integration between Exchange Server 2003 and the Microsoft Office System applications, are already being planned.
Carriglio says: “We are investigating new solutions for certified e-mail and legal archiving based on Exchange Server 2003. We also plan to integrate a service for sending faxes electronically, and [we are] looking into how collaboration technologies, such as Microsoft Office SharePoint® Portal Server 2003, can support more effective information sharing. While our previous technology infrastructure inhibited innovation, Microsoft technology actively encourages it.”
Support from a Leading Technology Partner
Through every stage of the project, Banca Intesa received support from Microsoft Services. More generally, the company’s relationship with Microsoft is seen as a strategic partnership. Carriglio says: “Microsoft is more than a supplier of solutions or a source of IT support services. This is because we share a vision of innovation that will support our business strategies in the long term.”
Microsoft Windows Server System
Microsoft Windows Server System is a line of integrated and manageable server software designed to reduce the complexity and cost of IT. Windows Server System enables you to spend less time and budget on managing your systems so that you can focus your resources on other priorities for you and your business.
For more information about Windows Server System, go to: