Allianz Builds Business Continuance Solution with Cisco

Cisco Systems (www.cisco.com), announced that its optical and storage area networking (SAN) technologies will help Allianz Hungary extend its business continuity infrastructure, reduce operational risk and address industry compliance guidelines.

Allianz, Hungary's largest insurance company with three million customers, estimates it will save more than $100,000 a year by deploying the Cisco technology instead of employing multiple links to connect two data centres located 14kms apart in Budapest.

"Cisco provides a scalable and cost effective solution that protects our investment, where other technologies can cost up to three times as much. We see Cisco's solution as highly innovative and is driving the standards in optical network solutions," said József Szabó, head of communications and PCs, at Hungary Computing Ltd, the IT arm of Allianz Hungary.

The intelligent network will help Allianz form the foundation of a Cisco Data Centre Network Architecture to support current and future data storage needs in an evolutionary way, as well as provide a virtualised environment to share computing and data resources.

Allianz's business continuity strategy - based around its two Budapest locations and central SAN - has been developed using Cisco technology. Since all business data is held at the data centres, Allianz needed a highly secure and reliable way to back up and store data, share it between locations, and provide agents and 3000 staff at 140 branch offices around Hungary with a disaster tolerant IT infrastructure.

"Business continuance remains a primary concern for European financial institutions like Allianz, because it helps ensure critical day-to-day business operations are available in the event of a natural disaster, hardware malfunction or application failure," said Kaan Terzioglu, managing director, Central and Eastern Europe for Cisco Systems.