Caixa Seguros Strengthens and Protects its Virtualized Infrastructure with Enterasys

Brazilian Insurance Agency Ensures Performance, Reliability and Protection for more than 70,000 Users across 16 Locations
Enterasys Networks Inc., the Secure Networks Company™, announced today that Caixa Seguros, the insurance arm of the Brazilian government-owned savings bank CEF and a leading provider of life, automobile, commercial and property insurance, has selected Enterasys solutions to protect its recent investment in virtualization. Through its partnership with Enterasys, Caixa Seguros has achieved its goals of complete network redundancy, a 100% network availability rating and total security for its new virtualized data center, which serves more than 70,000 users across Brazil.

Caixa Seguros selected Enterasys after an intense request for proposal (RFP) process and proof-of-concept (POC) validation, in which the criteria of present and future technology, proven virtual security methodologies and regulatory compliance were considerations. The agency also required a solution that successfully integrated with existing infrastructure and was simple to manage.

“During the process, we learned that a particular vendor solution might seem marvelous, but beyond our resources to implement and maintain,” noted Luiz Henrique Menani, manager of Technological Infrastructure Engineering at Caixa Seguros. “With Enterasys, the products’ differential characteristics met our technological expectations, were easy to use and provided exceptional value. We have already achieved considerable gains from the use of Secure Networks policies.”

Caixa Seguros purchased four Enterasys Matrix® N-Series core switches to link the company’s head office in Brasília with its new, state-of-the-art data center in Sao Paulo, while supporting the company’s entire 120-server main backbone. It also purchased 10 Enterasys Matrix E1 switches, which serve as border switches connecting with the core switches and the other network distribution points making up the horizontal cabling. This new infrastructure, which currently represents 90% of the total network assets of the insurance firm, resulted in a strengthened backbone that is more redundant, secure and available to the 1,000 workstations divided among the head office in Brasília, as well as the 16 branch offices that connect more than 70,000 users. Most importantly, Caixa Seguros reported no downtime during the migration phase of deployment.

“Our partners at Enterasys and Redisul made it possible to carry out the implementation process smoothly and objectively. One of the essential factors for the project’s success was that our users never noticed the changes—they were completely transparent externally,” Menani said. “We created a completely new backbone for our infrastructure, without shutting down the network"

Caixa Seguros continues to leverage Enterasys for project follow-up and consulting services using Redisul, an Enterasys partner in Brazil’s middle-western and southern regions. The company also plans to upgrade its remaining devices in 2008 using Enterasys products.