Case Study

Washington Mutual consolidates multiple operation centers and staff to a central data center with more effective event monitoring and secure remote access to their systems.

Washington Mutual is one of the nation's leading financial services companies for consumers and small business.

Washington Mutual’s Challenges

Washington Mutual operated three mainframe data centers across the U.S. Each data center was fully staffed (4-10 operators per shift), with console terminals stacked 3 high in a semicircular horseshoe rack on the data center raised floor. Up to 30 terminals were monitored at a time by staff members who would walk around the horseshoe looking for highlighted messages to appear on the monitors.

WaMu wanted to consolidate these three operations staff to a single location in Seattle, from which operators could monitor and interact with console terminals from “classroom” style PC workstations (that also allowed them access to email, web browsers, and other business tools). Large screen monitors in the front of the operations center would display prioritized information received from consoles.

The Solution

Consolidating Operations to One Location for Reduced Overhead and Redundancies

Washington Mutual selected the I/O Concepts solution to secure operators’ connections to remote data centers and manage console message traffic from all data centers in one location with one staff.

Securing Remote Operations

I/O allows Washington Mutual to secure the connection from their operations center in Seattle to mainframes in any other WaMu data center. Operators login to I/O using their usernames and passwords stored in WaMu’s standard security repository. Every user interaction, including log-on's, log-offs, and commands sent to consoles are stored in an audit trail data store. Data sent to operators from the mainframe consoles is encrypted.

Efficiently Managing Events from Multiple Data Centers

The I/O Concepts solution manages all console message traffic from all 3 of Washington Mutual’s mainframe data centers. Working seamlessly with WaMu’s existing data center automation system, prioritized messages are highlighted and then routed to specific staff members, groups of operations staff members, and to the large screen monitors.

Ensuring Business Continuity with Disaster Recovery Access

I/O Concepts solution allows operators to sit in the Seattle operations area, the Dallas-Ft. Worth site, or any Wi-Fi enabled location, like a Starbuck’s or Public Library, and securely access mainframe consoles. In the event of a large-scale event, like a terrorist or weather-related event, operations can be immediately switched to an alternate location. In the event of a short-term event, like a fire alarm, operations staff will take laptop computers to a nearby location to continue running operations in place.

Rapid Return on Investment

With the I/O Concepts solution, Washington Mutual was able to consolidate three 24x7x365 staff into a single operations staff and implement solutions for their operational needs (security, disaster recovery, remote access). This resulted in cost-savings and productivity improvements, giving WaMu a 4-month ROI.

Washington Mutual's Results:

Reduced the number of operators and terminals required to monitor event traffic with a centralized event management solution

Consolidated staffing to a single Seattle location with remote access capabilities to data centers across the nation

Enabled secure remote access for complete availability and accessibility to their data centers

Works seamlessly with their existing data center automation systems