F. van Lanschot Bankiers N.V, the oldest independent bank in The Netherlands, has deployed four Brocade 48000 Directors as part of an organisation-wide data management strategy that aims to simplify storage management enable services such as internet banking.

Delivered through EMC and Comparex, the Brocade 48000 Directors will optimize Van Lanschot's current storage infrastructure, and help the organization deliver competitive advantage to its users.

Van Lanschot NV is the holding company of F. van Lanschot Bankiers NV, the oldest independent bank in the Netherlands with a history dating back to 1737. Van Lanschot focuses on three target groups: high net-worth individuals, medium-sized businesses (including family businesses) and institutional investors.

The bank deployed Brocade 48000 directors as part of an overall architecture which encompassed EMC Symmetrix DMX-4s, EMC Disk Libraries and EMC Celerra gateways, Access Gateways in its bladed server environments.

Putting Brocade's 48000 Directors for the heart of its data center consolidated its existing storage footprint (from 24 switches to four Brocade 48000 Directors) and in turn simplifies overall SAN management.

"Exploiting the corporate information assets is essential in any industry, but is particularly important in the financial services sector", commented Claus Egge, Program Director at IDC's Storage Group. "By leveraging the potential of next-generation storage solutions [virtualisation, consolidation, data protection], banks are able to simplify storage management which in turn enables smarter provisioning of information to their internal and external customers."

The project took three months, with Van Lanschot able to fully migrate the Brocade 48000 Directors into its existing storage architecture.

In the future, the bank aims to expand its data management strategy with VMWare functionality and in-flight migration techniques that will equip it to meet the needs of its evolving customer base. The Brocade 48000 Director platform for enterprise SANs, delivers powerful 8Gb and 4Gb connectivity, advanced hardware and software capabilities, and "five-nines"reliability.

The Brocade 48000's modular design and high port density provides a flexible and scalable solution for large open systems and System z environments in round-the-clock data centers.

The project is expected to enable greater online services provision for the bank's clients.