SYDNEY, Australia –  ING DIRECT Australia today announced its integrated “Bank in a Box” private cloud solution from Cisco®, Dimension Data, Microsoft and NetApp to help accelerate its innovation and allow  new applications and services to  be delivered to customers even more rapidly.

ING DIRECT Australia required a highly automated and scalable private cloud solution that enables staff members to provision copies of the bank representing all the bank’s applications and services – almost five and half terabytes of data – instantly and seamlessly from software they use every day.

Prior to the integrated “Bank in a Box” solution, it took the team twelve weeks to provision environments hindering the time to market of critical projects. Today ING DIRECT Australia announced that the time to provision a copy of the bank is ten minutes effectively eliminating the cost to provisioning and relieving the constraint to the projects.

By fast tracking the time to market for new products, the company expects improved customer satisfaction and retention and to gain a critical competitive edge. Further, eliminating the costs associated with provisioning copies of the bank, the ING DIRECT Australia information technology (IT) team has clearly demonstrated that technology is a strategic enabler to driving business outcomes.

“This technology is a huge leap forward for us. Not only has it improved efficiency but it now gives us a platform to create solutions and innovate in a new dimension.

“We’re excited to be the first bank to bring this project to life and share it with the industry,” said ING DIRECT CIO Andrew Henderson.

Peter Menadue, Group General Manager, Microsoft Solutions for Dimension Data said: “ING DIRECT’s “Bank in a Box” demonstrates a unique combination of technologies, resulting in a highly automated and elastic infrastructure.”

Phil Goldie, Director of Server and Tools for Microsoft said: “Private cloud computing is enabling ING DIRECT to focus on innovation over maintenance, to streamline costs and to respond to the need for IT speed.”

Peter O’Connor, Vice President for Netapp Australia and New Zealand, said, “We congratulate ING DIRECT on its commitment to innovation. We look forward to working with ING DIRECT as it realises further business benefits from the new technology environment.

Courtney Dodds, data centre portfolio manager for Cisco Australia and New Zealand said: “Cisco is incredibly pleased to see that ING DIRECT Australia is already experiencing the business advantages from selecting the Cisco Unified Computing System, delivering greater cost efficiency and agility back to the business.” 
-ENDS-

Technorati Tags: Cisco, Unified Computing System, FlexPod, NetApp, Microsoft, Dimension Data, virtualisation, data centre, data storage

About Cisco
Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate. Information about Cisco can be found at http://www.cisco.com.au. For ongoing news, please go to News@Cisco in Australia and New Zealand at http://newsroom.cisco.com/anz.

About Dimension Data
Founded in 1983, Dimension Data plc is an ICT services and solutions provider that uses its technology expertise, global service delivery capability, and entrepreneurial spirit to accelerate the business ambitions of its clients. Dimension Data is a member of the NTT Group. www.dimensiondata.com.

About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realise their full potential. www.microsoft.com.au

About NetApp
NetApp creates innovative storage and data management solutions that accelerate business breakthroughs and deliver outstanding cost efficiency. Discover NetApp’s passion for helping companies around the world go further, faster at www.netapp.com.

About ING DIRECT
ING DIRECT pioneered branchless banking in Australia by offering the first online, high interest, fee free savings account. Our low cost operating model allows us to pass these savings on to the customer in the form of great value products and services. Today, ING DIRECT has more than 1.4 million customers with $26 billion in deposits and $38 billion in mortgages and a range of innovative banking products.
Please note ING DIRECT is never abbreviated to ING.

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APPENDIX – Project Details
ING DIRECT Australia selected Dimension Data to deploy its “Bank in a Box” integrated solution. The solution includes Cisco and NetApp FlexPod® for Microsoft built on the Cisco Unified Computing System™ (Cisco UCS™), Cisco Nexus® switches, NetApp FAS 3270 unified storage system and Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and System Center virtualisation technology along with professional and managed services to achieve the following benefits:

• Faster Innovation.  Staff can tap into all the data, servers and applications they require and self-provision a test scenario in less than ten minutes.  While the productivity gains itself are significant, as developers, testers and other staff are conducting more scenario testing they are also seeing many new use cases that are sparking incremental new products and services.  Now that the solution is operating in Australia, ING DIRECT is preparing to deploy it to a number of its global entities.
• Business Agility.  Developers are using existing Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 with Team Foundation Server 2010 and Virtual Lab Management tool sets to tap into the “Bank in the Box”. Use of the solution has extended beyond testing and development to also include employee education and training.  For example, ING DIRECT Australia’s IT team may provision a simulation of a desktop with all of its customer-facing applications for customer service representatives to use for training purposes. Alternatively, IT can provision scenarios to help in the quick resolution of operational or process issues. In addition, Cisco UCS helps keep operational and CAPEX costs down while speeding up operations by enabling IT to create policy-driven, repeatable service profiles that change in alignment with the company’s business and workload requirements.
• Cloud Ready.  With the deployment of “Bank in a Box”, ING DIRECT Australia is cloud-enabled for the future. Already the company has benefitted from the more efficient and flexible IT operational models that cloud enables. As a result, IT team members may be shifted to areas of business that will deliver the highest value back to the company such as the research and development of innovative new products.