Case Study:

Come together

1 September 2006

Banca Intesa is part of the Intesa Group and one of Italy's leading financial institutions. It was created after the merger of major credit companies Cariplo and AmbroVeneto in 1998, and in 2001 Banca Commerciale Italiana also integrated with the company.

As the three companies that formed the new organisation worked with complex IT systems to support their business activities, the merger left Banca Intesa with a disparate computing environment that was time consuming and costly to manage. Because of this the company's IT department decided to roll-out a single IT environment with the intention of migrating more than 60,000 workstations across the group.

In addition, the department wanted to standardise the existing messaging infrastructures, as Mirco Carriglio, distribution technologies manager, explains: "Historically, 28,000 of our user mailboxes ran on Webmail. We used Lotus Notes for an additional 10,000 and IMAP Cyrus/Linux for 500 mailboxes at some foreign branches. We had deployed another open-source technology called MailHUB to integrate these diverse mail systems.

"At Banca Intesa, e-mail is considered a mission-critical technology," continues Carriglio. "We needed new tools to improve the quality of our messaging services and enhance administration. Another goal was to streamline development and deployment of new messaging functionality such as mobile access to e-mail and calendar information from outside the office."

After analysis of the market, Banca Intesa decided to deploy Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, part of Microsoft Windows Server System integrated server software. "We wanted a technology that is simple to administer and integrate, and which doesn't require expensive maintenance," reveals Carriglio. "Enterprise class support was also a prerequisite and a key factor in our decision to deploy Microsoft technology."

As the company already supported the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 operating system, deploying Exchange Server 2003 was made quick and easy. It meant the IT staff could use Active Directory, a key feature of Windows Server 2003, to centrally manage inboxes and authenticate users accessing both the internal network and Exchange Server messaging services.

During the deployment stage, IT staff migrated 33,000 mailboxes to the new infrastructure and rolled out the Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 messaging and collaboration client on 8,000 desktop machines. An additional 25,000 workstations access mail services using Microsoft Office Outlook Web Access.

"We rolled out the new technology in just two months, minimising the disruption for our end users," reveals Carriglio. The reliability of the service is guaranteed by Microsoft Premier Support, which provides a dedicated team to monitor our systems."

The new infrastructure allows Banca Intesa to manage its messaging environment and plan for future development projects more effectively. "We can see the size and performance of our e-mail environment and predict future requirements. We can make the necessary investments to ensure effective storage and messaging in the future," says Carriglio.

In addition, Banca Intesa can streamline management of its messaging systems, as Carriglio explains: "Integration with Active Directory allows helpdesk staff to provision new users and change user access rights themselves. As a result, the entire system can now be managed by just four dedicated mail managers."

This new messaging infrastructure provides a solid foundation for value-adding development projects, with new collaborative services that make use of the integration between Exchange Server 2003 and Windows Server 2003 already being planned. "We are investigating new solutions for certified e-mail and legal archiving based on Exchange Server 2003," reveals Carriglio. "We also plan to integrate a service for sending faxes electronically, and we are looking into how collaboration technologies, such as Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003, can support more effective information sharing. Where our previous technology infrastructure inhibited innovation, Microsoft technology actively encourages it."

Carriglio concludes: "Microsoft is more than a provider of solutions or a source of IT support services. This is because we share a vision of innovation that will support our business strategies in the long term."