Nationwide makes progress on replacing its IT network

Building society upgrading 1,000km of network cable

Building society Nationwide has completed the first part of a major IT network overhaul to improve functionality of its computer systems.

The company, working with IT services firm Computacenter, is 30 per cent of the way through replacing a 14-year-old network at its two administration centres in Swindon and Northampton.

The network, which includes 1,000km of cabling and links to 8,000 computers, will allow Nationwide to add new business applications to its finance, personnel and call centre departments.

The network has already been installed in the Swindon call centre and Computacenter is expected to complete the rest of the upgrade by March 2008.

‘Our cabling infrastructure is between 12 and 14 years old, and although it was meeting the needs of the business over that period, we needed to ensure that we could continue to offer high availability,’ said Arthur Amos, head of technology infrastructure at Nationwide.

‘We are moving a lot of data around the firm to remove the need for paper, and this requires a better network infrastructure.’

By installing the Cisco network, Nationwide’s 8,000 users will see connectivity increase from 20Mbit/s to 1Gbit/s. It will also allow the financial services company to introduce further applications, such as voice over IP, at a later stage.

Nationwide is also using BrandRex Millennium cable and SmartPatch network patching technology to build a map of its infrastructure.

‘In the past, we knew where our network hubs and devices were, but not where all the routers were. However, now we can see the whole network topography,’ said Amos.

‘This means that we can work out what needs to be done before we go to the location.’

By outsourcing the network upgrade to Computacenter, Nationwide’s IT team is able to carry on with the normal support of technology operations.

‘The upgrade is a long-term commitment requiring a substantial amount of out-of-hours working to avoid disruption to the business,’ said Amos.

‘We needed additional resources to achieve this and to avoid compromising our daily support activities,’ he added.