Cisco MDS 9509 Equips Mission-Critical Network for China UnionPay

Cisco MDS9509 Directors Strengthen Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity

BEIJING, October 7, 2005 - Cisco Systems® announced that Shanghai-based China UnionPay Co. Ltd. has selected Cisco® storage area network (SAN) solutions for the integration of its disaster recovery and data backup systems in Shanghai and Beijing. The integrated system will help ensure business continuity, while improving disaster recovery and data backup across the region. Once implemented, the new data backup network will provide a high level of security and easy access for hundreds of thousands of China UnionPay customers.

China UnionPay deployed six Cisco MDS 9509 Multilayer Intelligent directors - two in Beijing and four in Shanghai - in the system integration. Combined with VERITAS Volume Manager, the integrated network facilitates real-time data replication between the company’s headquarters and its remote disaster recovery center. This helps ensure that China UnionPay can protect its information assets and continue serving customers in the event of any external threat, including natural or man-made disasters.

As the only bankcard association in China and the sole organization responsible for all bankcard transactions nationwide, China UnionPay designs and manages a unified information exchange network for national inter-bankcard transactions. It offers a full range of services, including processing, transfers, authorizations, error management, inquiries, and reporting of cross-bank and cross-country transactions to its organization members.

Additionally, due to the convenience of intercity and inter-bank transactions, a growing number of consumers favorably view the use of bankcards. China UnionPay requires a non-stop service network with a stronger capacity for disaster protection and recovery to ensure sustained growth of bankcard transactions and customer satisfaction.

After rigorous and comprehensive comparison testing, the Cisco SAN solutions stood out for their flexibility, high availability and unified management. The award-winning Cisco MDS 9509 Multilayer Director is a multiprotocol system that can concurrently support a number of SAN protocols, including Fibre Channel, IP storage (Fibre Channel over IP and iSCSI), as well as mainframe transport via Fiber Connection (FICON). Its flexible architecture and innovations such as Virtual SANs (VSANs) allow integration with future, higher-performance storage protocols, and provide an open platform for hosting intelligent storage services such as network-based virtualization and replication.

William Shen, vice president of Cisco Systems China, commented, “As a customer-driven company, we fully understand the importance of maintaining, with security, the continuous operation of China UnionPay’s mission-critical business network. With this in mind, we have capitalized on our expertise and solutions in data storage and protection to further our ongoing relationship with China UnionPay and help ensure its long-term prosperity.”

About China UnionPay

China UnionPay, licensed by the People’s Bank of China, is a shareholding financial institution established through capital contributions by more than 80 domestic financial institutions, with registered capital of RMB1.65 billion. The Shanghai-based China UnionPay was officially incorporated on March 26, 2002. By adopting advanced technological tools as well as modern enterprise management mechanisms, China UnionPay aims to establish and run a national bankcard information switch network, so as to realize the interoperability of bankcards nationwide and further the development of China’s bankcard industry. China UnionPay will strive to realize the vision of “touring China, or even the world, with a single card”.
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