GOVERNMENT

ITERGO, the internal information services (IS) provider for ERGO, Germany's number two primary insurance provider serving 31 million customers throughout Europe, has established one of the first resilient packet rings (RPR) in Germany using a next generation optical platform from Nortel. This platform builds on Nortel's RPR leadership and proven carrier-grade technology and results in a highly resilient communications network, enabling a distributed IS architecture over a single optical infrastructure. Using the efficiency and scalability offered by 2.5G RPR gives ERGO a customised, high performance solution for reducing the complexity of its existing infrastructure while meeting current and future application needs of the four main German insurance companies within its group. Nortel provided the RPR platform under an agreement with ERGO announced in June 2004 to supply products, deployment and services. The RPR platform enables ITERGO to optimize the infrastructure, establish a multiservice platform and standardize the IT processes throughout the ERGO main offices in Duesseldorf, Hamburg, Cologne and Munich. Through these advantages, ERGO is able to realize significant operational cost reductions in its IT environment and maximize the underlying business advantage through higher availability of applications, use of existing distributed IT assets and expert resources, and partitioning of critical assets for business continuity. New applications linking virtual networked communities will now be possible at a fraction of the cost previously payable. "We are currently developing our company to be one of the most successful IT service providers in the financial industry," said Dietmar Schoeler, head of department engineering networking at ITERGO. "Our first German resilient packet ring enables us to target our solutions to our client demands. We need reliable and high performance network technology, and Nortel's technology enabled us to offer it in a customised and cost-effective way." "This converged solution clearly demonstrates our leadership in packet over optical and carrier grade networking," said Dr. Holger Hegemann, chief executive officer, Central Region, EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa), Nortel. "We were able to optimise the ITERGO infrastructure and facilitate and streamline internal processes so that ITERGO can now use the IT infrastructure in a more efficient and flexible way. This significantly reduces the communication costs in all companies of the ERGO Insurance group and offers them competitive advantages." With the formation of ERGO in the year 1998, the insurance group placed new demands on its IT as well as its telecommunication infrastructure. The capacity of the existing Wide Area Network (WAN) wasn't consistent throughout the company, had grown for years alongside the customer's needs, and had reached its technical limits. The demand for flexibility and cost effectiveness led to ERGO choosing the ring solution to connect its main German locations. The new scalable solution provides high availability as well as easy future expansion. Furthermore, it allows ITERGO to assign the fully networked resources effectively without the need to continuously restructure to meet business needs in a European insurance market that is rapidly changing. New Solution in Brief ITERGO's sites are connected by a carrier-grade backbone ring, while single connections are provided by T-Systems, using the Nortel Optical Metro 5100 platform. In order to use this bandwidth effectively ITERGO relies on Nortel solutions. Optical transmission systems provide access to the carrier network forming a multiservice platform and thus enabling video conferencing, voice and data transmission, IP data communication services as well as ATM and VPN services. In detail, the solution for ITERGO's multiservice platform includes Nortel Optical Metro 3500 platform, Nortel Passport 8600 and 7480 Ethernet routing switches, Nortel BayStack 470 Ethernet switches, and a complete network management solution. Moreover, the solution includes complete deployment, support and on-site maintenance.