Credit Mutuel Arkea Streamlines Mainframe Management With CA Portfolio
CA Logo. (PRNewsFoto/CA, Inc.)
NEW YORK, NY UNITED STATES
Leading French Bank Embraces CA's Mainframe 2.0 Solutions to Reduce Costs and Improve Delivery of IT Services
PARIS LA DEFENSE, France, Oct. 14 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- CA Inc. (Nasdaq: CA) today announced that Credit Mutuel Arkea is leveraging CA's industry-leading Mainframe 2.0 management solutions-including CA Mainframe Software Manager (MSM)-to streamline its mainframe operations. By doing so, the bank expects to reduce IT costs while also improving the delivery of IT services across the enterprise.
Credit Mutuel Arkea federates several regional subsidiaries-including Credit Mutuel de Bretagne, federations in the Sud-Ouest and Massif Central regions, and approximately 20 specialised subsidiaries. CA's Mainframe 2.0 solutions will enable the bank to rationalize its mainframe management software portfolio.
One of the key new Mainframe 2.0 solutions that Credit Mutuel Arkea is implementing as part of its new plan is CA MSM. CA MSM will enable the bank to install and maintain CA software for the IBM® z/OS® platform via a simple web interface. CA MSM also proactively provides information on necessary updates and drastically reduces administrative burdens. As a result, the bank expects to improve staff productivity and better maintain the health of its mainframe environment.
Developing existing applications while continuing to innovate
In late 2008, the bank took advantage of CA's Mainframe Value Program (MVP), a no-charge service which helps organizations increase their efficiency by using their existing CA mainframe management solutions in the best possible way. According to Laurent du Fayet de la Tour, country manager for CA France: "The MVP programme is highly appreciated by CA's customers since, thanks to an exacting technical audit by our personnel, it enables them to improve the return on their investment in our solutions."
Accordingly, CA's MVP teams evaluated Credit Mutuel Arkea's use of its installed CA software and offered numerous recommendations to help increase output, reduce costs, and implement best practices. CA also presented the bank with an action plan aimed at streamlining its overall use of CA technology.
Six months later, Credit Mutuel Arkea reconfirmed its commitment to CA solutions and decided to gradually replace some third-party software vendors' tools with CA solutions. Didier Calvar, deputy CIO of Credit Mutuel Arkea, comments: "CA was offering substantial commitments of sustainability that would help modernise and enhance our mainframe operations. Moreover, the completeness of CA's proposal enables us to envisage this evolution at a reduced cost while resolving global problems associated with our distributed and mainframe systems."
In addition to highlighting the technical superiority of CA solutions, Credit Mutuel Arkea's decision also underscores the strong relationship with CA over the past 20 years. According to Calvar: "The partnership with CA promises an accelerated return on investment plus an extremely high level of expertise in technology, methodology and know-how. For each analysed criteria, CA came out on top."
Simplify, automate and rationalize
One of the most obvious major benefits to be gained by consolidation on CA solutions is rationalisation. By reducing the number of software and IT services vendors, Credit Mutuel Arkea's IT organisation will unify its infrastructure around its long-standing technology partner. At the same time, by simplifying and automating the management of its mainframe environment, it will increase staff productivity. These are precisely the objectives of CA's Mainframe 2.0 and broader Lean IT strategy-to maximise value and minimise costs.
"Large enterprises such as Credit Mutuel Arkea continue to depend heavily on their mainframe systems to deliver critical IT services to their users-but, at the same time, they must relentlessly innovate in order to control costs and ensure the reliability of those services," said du Fayet de la Tour. "This new contract with Credit Mutuel Arkea demonstrates that CA is the ideal partner for achieving these important objectives and that we offer a very attractive and comprehensive alternative to IBM solutions."
Credit Mutuel Arkea in facts and figures:
569 customer desks (branches and subsidiary agencies)
4,000 administrators
7,300 employees
2.9 million customers in banking and insurance activities
CA (Nasdaq: CA), the world's leading independent IT management software company, helps customers optimize IT for better business results. CA's Enterprise IT Management solutions for mainframe and distributed computing enable Lean IT-empowering organizations to more effectively govern, manage and secure their IT operations. For more information, visit www.ca.com.
