International financial organisation Fortis talks to James Rogers
about how it manages its growing mountain of data
With more than 200 member companies and over 60,000 employees
worldwide, the Fortis Group is very much an international company.
Unsurprisingly for such a massive organisation, the amount of data
produced by the company is growing rapidly. Kees Eskes, ICT project
manager at Fortis Bank Netherlands explains: 'Managing the growing
amount of data is one of the largest challenges that we face at the
moment, and this is especially the case in the NT environment. For
example, the amount of data produced on NT at our headquarters is
growing by 75 per cent a year.'
As far as technology is concerned, Fortis in the Netherlands
already has something of an IBM heritage. For the last year and a
half the company has been using ADSM 3.1 running on Network Storage
Manager at the Amev-site (one of the insurance companies of Fortis)
in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Furthermore, Fortis is now
implementing Tivoli Storage Manager at one of the Fortis Bank
headquarters in Amsterdam. Eskes explains: 'We chose Tivoli Storage
Manager for several reasons although we did a project for selecting
a tool, back in 1997, and, when we made a shortlist of products, we
chose ADSM.'
This formed the basis of the distributed storage programme on
the Utrecht site, which is now producing almost two terabytes of
data. According to Eskes, this figure is growing fast, with the
Amsterdam site now producing 500 Gigabytes of data. As well as
coping with a data explosion, Fortis also needed a product that
would work across a range of different platforms. This is
particularly important as the Utrecht installation uses Novell
Netware, NT, OS/2 and AIX. Eskes says: 'If you bear in mind that
the Amsterdam site also uses NT, AIX and OS/2, then the storage
management tool we select must be able to manage these distributed
platforms.' Back in 1998, ADSM provided the answer at the Utrecht
site. Tivoli Storage Manager is the successor of ADSM. So it goes
without saying that Fortis turned to Tivoli and its business
partners Solution 6000 and supplier Esscon Services, to work on the
project at one of the bank's headquarters located in Amsterdam.
Eskes explains: 'Solution 6000 and Esscon worked on the
Amsterdam project in the pre-implementation phase'. He adds: 'In
conjunction with us they defined an effective and efficient
architecture and infrastructure for us.' Ton de Wekker, managing
director of Esscon says: "Before January 2000, Fortis was using
ADSM, so it is natural for them to move from this to Tivoli Storage
Manager. Moreover, they have already implemented the Tivoli System
Management Suite.' Thus, Fortis has now installed Tivoli Storage
Manager 3.7 on an RS/6000 H70 server with a 3494 library at the
bank's Amsterdam head office.
Eskes estimates that the Tivoli Storage Manager system will be
up and running sometime in May 2000. He explains: 'With Tivoli we
can integrate almost every management aspect, Tivoli is a bundle of
tools, based on an object oriented framework.' For an organisation
like Fortis, which consists of a wide range of member companies,
there is a real need for a product to link these disparate strands
of technology. Indeed, Eskes is keen to emphasise that a number of
applications being run are actually unique to Fortis. He says:
'Fortis Bank is in the process of the integration of MeesPierson,
Generale Bank Nederland and VSB Bank, which brings along a variety
of applications and data, i.e. some companies use both Exchange and
Lotus Notes as a mail server.' He adds: 'We want to ensure the
management of all these applications and data whilst at the same
time saving money.'
Importantly, Eskes also believes that there is potential for
Fortis to implement SANs (Storage Area Network) at some point in
the future. He admits that the ICT department would like to
consolidate its data onto fewer servers than it is currently using.
It goes without saying that this is the key to significant savings
for companies with huge storage needs and Eskes sees Fortis as no
exception to this rule. He explains: 'It is definitely one of our
goals to consolidate and centralise our data, therefore if it is
consolidated then SANs could play a part in that.' According to
Eskes, any company that is planning to implement a SAN should first
do so on a limited number of sites. He says: 'You should start on a
smaller environment and you can then use this as the basis for a
much more complicated SAN.' Indeed, Eskes also singles out NT as
providing an excellent platform to connect to a SAN. Given the
burgeoning amounts of storage found in the NT arena at the moment
it seems that the knock-on effect may be a rapid growth in SANs. If
Fortis continues to grow at the same rapid pace then the company
may need to consider SANs as the next piece in its storage
puzzle.