VUB bank: Young at Heart

Young at Heart

 

Flexible physical layer infrastructure ensures VUB keeps pace with the future

Originally established as the Slovak Republic state financial institution in 1990, Všeobecná úverová banka (VUB) was privatized in 2001 with the majority stake being acquired by the Italian banking group, Intesa Sanpaolo (formerly IntesaBCI). VUB is one of the largest banks in Slovakia and the only universal bank with a licence to provide the entire range of banking services to the general public, corporate and institutional customers. With 1.2 Million clients and around 4,000 employees, the bank focuses on mortgage and consumer loans, deposit and payment products and services, corporate banking and foreign trade financing. These are provided through an extensive sales network including 193 retail branches, 7 Magnifica centres and 32 corporate branches, designated for small and medium enterprises. In addition, VUB bank operates 11 mortgage centres, specialised in comprehensive housing finance services.

Project requirements:

  • Provide a high quality standards based universal physical layer infrastructure for Bank’s campus and production data centers
  • Ensure high reliability and long term ease of maintenance
  • Enable optimized IT systems performance and higher cooling efficiencies in data centers
  • Allow faster moves, adds and changes of IT assets
 

Since 2002 VUB bank has relied on Rosenberger Optical Solutions & Infrastructure (Rosenberger OSI) for providing its physical layer networking infrastructure, from its initial implementation to ongoing enhancement and maintenance. This has included upgrading the cabling infrastructure to accommodate new technology requirements as and when necessary.

Following its privatization and acquisition in 2001, a strategic decision had been taken by the Bank to modernize its campus and data center IT operations in order to meet future business objectives. As part of this the Bank recognized a state of the art network cabling infrastructure was essential for supporting its immediate and long term IT requirements.

VUB subsequently undertook an extensive tender process and as part of this Rosenberger OSI was selected as its long term strategic cabling infrastructure partner. The decision based on the company’s reputation for reliability, innovative standards-based product design, and a clear vision of the physical layer technological developments necessary for meeting the future needs of the Data Center.

 

The challenge

A major requirement was the provision of a long term and easily maintainable physical layer solution. This called for the design and installation of a cabling infrastructure with the inherent flexibility to scale to as the bank grew, as well as accommodate new IT technologies and systems as they evolved in future years. At the same time, there was the need from day one to support the connectivity of a heterogeneous vendor environment while at the same time meeting increasing density requirements in the data centers, and ensuring IT asset moves, adds and changes could be undertaken as fast and as easily as possible. The overall and ongoing challenge has necessitated Rosenberger OSI designing and supplying standards-based cabling products including offthe-shelf and custom cabling solutions. From the outset, and ever since, a well-documented approach has been essential in order to meet the specific customer requirement for long term availability of the required physical layer, and for maximizing return on investment (ROI).

 

The solution

In 2002, Rosenberger OSI commenced work on the design and subsequent installation of the physical layer infrastructure at VUB’s campus premises and data centers in Bratislava. Since then additional premises and data center locations have been added.

Today the physical layer core infrastructure is composed of multimode OM3 optical fiber trunk cabling as well as OS2 singlemode connections. The OM3 cabling solutions are designed to support 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) up to distances of 300 meters.

The connectivity is mainly based on LC connectors (duplex and compact) but multi-fiber MTP® is also used, particularly for the attachment of the legacy computer systems. Both these connector types are now typically replacing the larger and older designs, allowing for more fiber ports per rack to support growing rack density demands. Mainly 6 and 12 channel trunk cables have been deployed and the density in the panels goes to a maximum of 48 LC-ports and 24 MTP® connectors on 1 HU.

The following Rosenberger OSI cabling infrastructure products are currently installed:

  • Trunk cables: OM3 and OS2
  • SMAP-G2 and relevant patch cords ensuring high density and modularity
  • 6 - 72 channel trunk cables in line with customer requirements
 

With Rosenberger OSI as our strategic long term cabling infrastructure partner for the past 15 years we have been assured of a highly reliable and future-proofed physical layer solution. The flexibility to easily upgrade and enhance the network as and when we need ensures we always have a state of the art campus and data center infrastructure at our disposal, allowing VUB to support our employees in providing our many clients with highly responsive banking services.

Vladimír Planka, Central Storage Team Leader VUB

 

Customer Business Benefits

  • Future-proofed, scalable physical layer cabling infrastructure ensures highly available IT systems, performance, and security
  • Flexibility to support new IT developments ensures consistent and fastest possible system response times and user productivity
  • Significant reduction in data center operating costs through greater cooling efficiencies
  • Well documented, standards based and easily maintained infrastructure solution ensures maximum ROI and reduced Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
  • By exemplary cable management VUB Banka ensures easy to be carried out moves, adds and changes resulting in additional optimization of the operational costs
 

Summary

For 15 years Rosenberger OSI’s cabling infrastructure technology and professional installation expertise has ensured VUB operates and easily maintains a continuously evolving physical layer network.

In turn, this has enabled the provision of a highly efficient heterogeneous IT environment throughout the campus and data center estate. And one which will always be capable of keeping pace with the growing and changing demands of VUB’s clients.