ME Bank Selects Cisco, NetApp and VMware

Members Equity Bank Pty Ltd (ME Bank), the only bank in Australia 100%
owned by Australia’s industry super funds, has selected a Cisco, Systems, Inc. and NetApp, Inc. FlexPod for VMware solution to help
transform its IT and operational functions and accelerate the speed
with which it can introduce new business applications and services to
customers.

ME Bank, which provides customers with
fairer banking services (straightforward and low-cost), embarked on an IT
transformation strategy in 2011 to improve efficiencies and support the Bank’s
aims to increase customer numbers and provide better value to members of
Industry Super Funds and Unions over the next three years.

"The
IT transformation strategy, which is scheduled to be completed in June 2015,
includes building a next-generation data centre platform with Cisco, NetApp and
VMware that will help provide us with the ability to both create innovative new
services and rapidly respond to changing business demands," said Jem
Richards, enterprise architect for ME Bank.

ME Bank selected in February 2012 to deploy
a private cloud built on the FlexPod for VMware and Cisco Unified Computing
System’ (Cisco UCS), Cisco Nexus switches, NetApp MetroCluster Solution and vSphere 5 Solutions.

The IT solution will support transformation in the following ways: Business
agility to hasten delivery of new services to customers. ME Bank expects to create
test and development environments that will hasten the delivery of new business
service applications to customers. While it may take two weeks to create these
environments to test new services before launch, the expectation is this will
be reduced to minutes.

The bank aims to accelerate the pace it can deliver new application services,
reflecting customer demand for even more capabilities in Internet banking,
smart phone applications and social media. Flexibility to respond to
changing market demands.

ME Bank launched its Workplace Banking strategy in 2011, which capitalises on
its longstanding relationships with industry super funds and unions, to provide
banking where its customers are located – in their workplace. An initiative
designed to help grow its customer base, ME Bank is piloting Workplace Banking
Kiosks that enable customers to have virtual face-to-face conversations with
banking specialists via Cisco TelePresence endpoints. Piloted in Melbourne
Central in the third quarter of 2012, the kiosks have received positive initial
customer feedback.

The FlexPod for VMware platform has the
capability to scale to support these Workplace Banking Kiosks as they are
rolled out across Australia. The FlexPod for VMware platform will also support
many of ME Bank’s applications including its Internet banking application,
customer call centre and core banking applications. Expand corporate commitment
to the environment to the data centre. With the selection of FlexPod for
VMware, ME Bank is integrating and converging its compute, networking and
storage on a secure single platform that it expects will enable a reduction of
its physical servers in production from 200-plus to less than 30, and as a
result aims to achieve a significant percentage of carbon emission savings.
Eliminate complexity and achieve operational efficiencies.

With just-in-time provisioning of scalable and virtualised compute, network and
storage, the company will be able to self-provision services and have them
available on-demand, accelerating the faster pace of change across the
organisation. The automation capabilities of Cisco UCS will also enable ME Bank
to be more proactive and spend more time focused on strategic initiatives and
less time on maintenance and routine tasks.

"Increasingly,
organisations are looking to solutions which inaugurate a new era of agility
within their business. By simplifying its data centre infrastructure
deployment, ME Bank has brought about a move from fragmented application silos
to shared, virtualised and cloud environments. ME Bank’s choice of Cisco and
NetApp FlexPod for VMware has helped the bank to reduce cost, risk and time
through HA of data and new storage capabilities. ME Bank’s
improved workflows and asset utilisation help it to deliver better business
outcomes for the benefit of its members," said Michael DeLandre, professional
services and systems engineering director for NetApp Australia.

"VMware
has been working with ME Bank for more than eight years as they virtualise
their infrastructure and continue their journey to the cloud. We are excited
that ME Bank is teaming with VMware and our partners Cisco and NetApp to deploy
FlexPod for highly secure and flexible cloud infrastructure for their next
generation of banking services," said Duncan Bennet, MD and VP, VMware
Australia and New Zealand.

"ME
Bank plans to grow its business by continuing to provide customers with
innovative products and an unrivalled service experience. By selecting Cisco
and NetApp FlexPod for VMware for its private cloud computing platform, ME Bank
will gain new levels of business agility that will make it easier to support
this growth and speed delivery of innovative new services to customers,"
said Mr. Courtney Dodds, data centre practice manager for Cisco Australia and
New Zealand.