Case Studies

Financial Institution - Automation

Challenges / Issues

  • The bank was unable to gain clear visibility of its mid-range IT environment because multiple acquisitions and the integration of their IT systems had created a highly complex environment. The sheer size and disparate nature of the bank’s operations also made a single view of the environment difficult to achieve
  • Without a clear view of its mid-range systems, it was impossible for the bank to say exactly what mid-range devices there were, identify where in the organisation they were located and whether they were running up to date patches
  • Improvements to better manage the environment were also impossible to implement without an overall view

Details / Actions

  • Morse analysed the bank’s current mid-range infrastructure to identify the requirements
  • Morse created a request for proposal document, invited a range of different vendors to respond and managed the response process. Once the submissions period was complete, Morse went through the responses and made recommendations to the bank to help them select a preferred supplier
  • Once the bank selected Opsware as its preferred vendor for the project, Morse acted as project manager and split the project into two different phases to make the implementation easier
  • Phase 1 was to install Opsware across the bank’s two main data centres and enabled the bank to better see what mid-range devices it had so that it could devise a way to better manage the environment
  • Phase 2 focused on addressing changes that needed to be made in order to meet the Sarbanes Oxley requirements identified by the bank’s auditors, including creating an audit trail of access to servers and any changes made to them, as well as a method for tightening the security of server access rights

Benefits / Deliverables

  • Following the two phases of implementation, the efficiency of the bank’s mid-range systems improved dramatically, saving the bank £400,000 in the first year of implementation alone
  • With the bank now able to see the state of each mid-range device, it was able to quickly identify any servers that needed to be patched. Instead of having to patch each server manually, the patch management process could now be controlled and managed centrally allowing patches to be deployed at a much faster rate. Apart from improving the bank’s security, this improvement to the patch management process alone has saved the bank approximately £130,000 in the first 12 months
  • The bank’s staff are now able to better segregate their duties to maximise efficiency, avoid overlap and enhance the bank’s security. The new systems management technology has required staff to hand over secure access rights to Unix servers to the security team, allowing them to clearly define which team has responsibility and bring control of access rights in line with the bank’s security policy
  • The new systems management technology allows the bank’s staff to use a single sign-on process so once they enter in their password they can access any server they like without having to enter additional passwords. As a result, they can respond to and fix problems much more quickly