07-26-12 | Press Release
During the review of their business continuity and disaster recovery plans, United Bank & Trust completed an evaluation of the flexibility and resiliency of their existing, in-house IT infrastructure. United’s approach was to complete a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) analysis comparing the enhancement of their existing in-house environment against leveraging a managed services arrangement with a third-party partner. A complex cost and services model was developed, which included forecasts covering 5-year and 10-year periods, that served as the critical tool to use during the evaluation of the various internal and external scenarios..
United’s conclusion was influenced by not only the economics identified in the TCO analysis, but also by the proliferation and affordability of private cloud based services within the financial services industry.
“We found that there was no real competitive advantage for United Bank & Trust to invest in building and managing a new data center. Our analysis showed that partnering with a state-of-the-art provider would give us more than we could build ourselves, helping us more efficiently manage our costs and service levels,” said Don Griffiths, United Bank & Trust Senior Vice President of Information Technology. “Our core business is providing instant financial solutions and servicing our clients — not data center management.”
United went through a lengthy selection process to identify a data center partner and evaluated several national, regional, and local providers. Key criteria included technical solution and managed services offerings, cost and value-added analysis, security/compliance capabilities, and ability to perform as a strategic partner.
“During the evaluation and discussions regarding our current and future challenges, Online Tech was very careful to listen, challenge where appropriate, and ultimately help us develop a model to fit our service delivery needs,” said Mike Collins, United Bank & Trust Chief Information Officer. “The technical solution they brought to the table, coupled with their responsiveness to satisfy our requirements and understanding of our need for a strategic partner, distinguished them as the clear winner.”
Online Tech offers a progressive infrastructure with three, fully redundant facilities interconnected via private fiber and connected to multiple Internet Service Providers (ISPs) with multiple points of entry. The data centers are uniquely located 53 miles apart on different commercial power grids for the ideal offsite backup and disaster recovery. All facilities, products, services, and staff are also independently PCI, HIPAA and SOX audited to meet the highest national compliance requirements.
“Online Tech’s culture of compliance shows it is a company that knows the discipline of documented processes and can meet a wide of variety of compliance requirements,” states Griffiths.
United Bank & Trust is a community-based financial services company located in Washtenaw, Lenawee, Livingston and Monroe Counties in Michigan. We provide financial solutions to our clients based on their unique circumstances and needs, through a line of business delivery system that includes banking, mortgage, structured finance and wealth management. For more information, visit the Company’s website at www.ubat.com.
