HP PARTNERS WITH CBA TO IMPROVE DATA STORAGE INFRASTRUCTURE AHEAD OF EXPANSION

“The monetary value of the investment far surpasses the benefits that the storage system will provide. Our data center will be simpler, more secure, more flexible, more efficient and less expensive to operate; thanks to a consolidated system that is a convergence of server, storage and networking - a management tool that has integrated security in its operations”, added Jeremy Ngunze. The new storage offerings will optimize cloud service delivery and simplify data management for CBA. 

 “HP 3PAR Utility Storage System boosts banks storage capacity to eight Terabytes”

Mr. Charles Kuria, MD - HP East Africa (l) and Jeremy Ngunze, CEO - CBA Kenya sign the Converged Infrastructure Project Solution contract at the CBA headquarters in Upperhill, Nairobi.

 Commercial Bank of Africa Group and HP Kenya have signed a Converged Infrastructure Project solution valued at Ksh65 million ($ 800,000) in support of the banks regional expansion. The solution known as HP 3PAR Storage System will provide additional storage capacity of 50 Terabytes to meet the banks projected customer demand in 2013 to 2015.

The project deployment will see HP implement the 3PAR Utility Storage across the CBA Headquarters in Upperhill and branches regionally. The scalability aspect of the utility storage system allows feature optimization where the bank will setup only what is required and scale up as the business grows; hence ensuring maximum optimization The contract signed by Mr. Charles Kuria, MD HP East Africa and Jeremy Ngunze, CEO-CBA Kenya, will allow the Bank to be more efficient and enable it comply with regulatory demands for the long term retention of data. Speaking during the signing of the Converged Infrastructure Project, Jeremy Ngunze said, “The system is offering a highly efficient solution to storage system performance as it enables CBA comply with regulatory demands for long term retention of data without impacting the service performance”.The project also marks a significant shift to a new eco friendly system for CBA Group. Speaking during the contract signing ceremony HP East Africa Managing Director, Mr. Charles Kuria indicated that this has been necessitated by the need to address the ever evolving needs of today's virtual and cloud data centres. “More and more companies are asking that the IT infrastructure implemented in their data centres balances both efficiency and the need for long-term environmental sustainability. The HP 3 PAR servers are designed to address these expectations”, said Mr Kuria. The HP 3PAR Storage is designed to be highly efficient in every way, consolidating hundreds or thousands of virtual machines on a single storage system thus allowing enterprises to meet their business needs with at least 50 per cent less capacity guaranteed. With fewer disks to power and cool, less equipment to house, and less hardware to down cycle at end of life, HP 3PAR Storage is an excellent foundation for energy-efficient data initiatives. Mr Kuria added that, “Our clients tell us their journey to the cloud will be one of the most critical transitions for them this decade, and the HP 3PAR Utility Storage meets their demand for a new storage architecture specifically designed for IT as a Service.  HP is poised to take clients to new levels of agility and efficiency like they’ve never experienced before.”

Through this system, CBA will set up and grow storage 41 per cent times faster while reducing administration time by up to 90 per cent. Delivering utility-based storage resources for the cloud Growing adoption of both public and private clouds has forced IT organizations and service providers to rethink their infrastructure design. Achieving the agility and performance demanded by cloud services requires the seamless integration of computing, storage and networking, as well as centralized management.