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Challenge

Skipton Building Society is the United Kingdom's fourth-largest building society, providing financial services such as home mortgages and savings accounts. In 2013, the organization made strong advances in customer count, savings balances, and pretax profits, but IT systems were unable to keep up with business demands.

• Complex processes, aging servers, and lack of agility prevented the IT department from effectively meeting business needs.
• Outmoded processes and technology were slowing application development and testing.
• Skipton was unable to respond to customer demand efficiently.

Solution

The Cisco team suggested a Cisco Domain Ten workshop. Domain Ten is a holistic framework that helps organizations focus on their business priorities and IT issues.

• The Domain Ten workshop helped Skipton document its goal of moving to a private cloud and identify challenges.
• Skipton chose Cisco UCS B-Series Blade Servers to replace its aging technology.

Results

• Completed its private cloud implementation, automated server provisioning, and reduced provisioning from four weeks to less than a day
• Supported in-house application developments more effectively.
• Scaled up to meet business needs and improve service to customers while meeting increasing demand.
• Achieved 90 percent virtualization, while reducing data center footprint, cables, and use of power