Standard Life – Insurance

International investment company relocates a Data Center from Frankfurt to Mutterstadt

The German branch of Standard Life Assurance Limited relies on PFALZKOM for their IT infrastructure. Based in Frankfurt, the company manages the retirement provision and asset accumulation business area for the German market. As part of its business transformation, Standard Life Germany is also breaking new ground in the area of IT. In order to minimize risks and save costs, large parts of IT services are being outsourced. Areas such as service desk and application support have been managed by an external service provider since 2017. The infrastructure was to be awarded to another service provider in 2018. The two Data Centers in the Frankfurt area were to be dissolved. Based on a tender, the aim was to find a suitable IT service provider that would ensure the uninterrupted operation of the future IT infrastructure, provide a secure home for the company’s critical data in Germany and provide the corresponding managed services and network and connectivity services. Business continuity, disaster recovery and the high requirements for the financial market as well as GDPR compliance were of course part of the tender.

Solution-oriented support and first-class technology inspire

PFALZKOM impressed with an individually tailored IT infrastructure concept that utilizes the complete service portfolio with state-of-the-art technologies. “We were particularly impressed by PFALZKOM’s competent and solution-oriented support and first-class technology”, explains Thomas Bierhals, Head of IT Management & Governance at Standard Life.

In addition to his role as Head of Department, Thomas Bierhals is also responsible for information and cyber security as IT Security Officer at the German branch of Standard Life. In this respect, a major focus of the project was not only on compliance with legal and regulatory requirements, but it also went much further. As a certified ISO 27001 Lead Auditor and Lead Cyber Security Manager, the IT specialist knows which areas require special attention. In close cooperation with PFALZKOM, all of these requirements were resolved satisfactorily.

The future-proof setup includes: Hyper Converged Infrastructure (Nutanix), Backup (Commvault), Bare Metal as a Service, site networking, professional internet, racks in geo-redundant Data Centers and Ethernet switches.

Hand in hand for successful Data Center relocation

Support with the migration from the previous to the new infrastructure is also part of the contract. Another milestone was the relocation of the previous redundant Data Center from Frankfurt to PFALZKOM’s Rhine-Neckar II Data Center. In just one weekend, heavy storage cabinets and a tape library were delivered, set up in a separate room and put into operation.

Several Standard Life employees and the specialists from PFALZKOM worked hand in hand as a team and were thus able to successfully complete this important intermediate step in the overall project. “Working with my colleagues at PFALZKOM was a lot of fun, even if it was exhausting. We are already looking forward to further joint projects”, enthuses Jochen Furrer, Head of Service at LILTEC GmbH from Darmstadt, which was responsible for the network integration and relocation in Standard Life’s innovative Infrastructure as a Service project.