Case Studies

St. Canice’s Credit Union

Update of a Credit Union’s ageing network infrastructure to a more secure & future-proof solution

CLIENT OVERVIEW

St. Canice’s Credit Union is a one of the country’s largest community credit unions – headquartered in Kilkenny City with more than 65,000 members and close to half a billion euros in assets.

It serves its members through its branches which are spread across several counties including Kilkenny, Laois and Carlow as well as through their 24/7 online services.

CHALLENGES

St. Canice’s Credit Union had an ageing network infrastructure that had grown over time across all its disparate branches. The challenge was to upgrade this network.

The upgrade, in terms of both hardware and software, would need to be significantly more secure, more robust, more resilient, more scalable, and provide sophisticated monitoring capabilities.

St. Canice’s also wanted to have a single pane of glass solution by the end of the project.

St. Canice’s were keen to find a solution provider who had experience in the community credit union movement.

BITS won this contract for two reasons:

1. BITS had a pre-existing relationship with the Credit Union as their trusted Managed Service Provider (MSP).
2. BITS also have a long-established and renowned expertise in the design, installation and maintenance of network infrastructure solutions.

HOW BITS HELPED

BITS introduced St. Canice’s Credit Union to LANCOM – Europe’s leading manufacturer of secure network solutions. BITS have a trusted partnership with LANCOM and demonstrated to the Credit Union that LANCOM’s Management Cloud (LMC) solution would be the most compelling solution for the network upgrade.

Before rollout, BITS held a number of planning sessions with the Credit Union’s IT team and with LANCOM to put together a detailed plan and implementation schedule with the core aim of ensuring a seamless changeover.

BITS then worked collaboratively with St. Canice’s Credit Union and with LANCOM to design and deliver the LMC solution.

THE RESULTS

•  Despite the complexity of the new network, and the challenges of having multiple physical branches, the BITS team ensured a smooth implementation with minimal disruption.
• A complex new network was installed across multiple branches without any disruption to operations – critical to a financial services provider where business continuity needs to be adhered to.
• This network now provides the robustness, resilience, scalability and security that St. Canice’s Credit Union was seeking.
• The results included a single pane of glass solution – the ability to monitor multiple platforms on one screen. This was achieved by consolidating the technology – thereby saving significant time on support and reducing the incidence of confusion.
• The Credit Union’s staff were unaware of both the nature and scale of the work – testament to the planning and effort that went into the overall project.
• The LMC solution has made it easier for both the Credit Union and BITS to manage and monitor the network on a 24*7 basis across all the Credit Union’s branches.
• The proactive alerting for issues allows the Credit Union to react and respond in a much timelier manner than the previous solution allowed.
• Finally, the solution provides a built-in automatic connectivity failover that BITS and LANCOM designed and that is essential in the Credit Union, ensuring that services are available to all 65,000+ members, as and when they need them, with no interruption.

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