US financial services company Wachovia Corporation is to install HP's ProLiant ML350 servers in branches in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland and Virginia.
Under the agreement approximately 1800 industry-standard HP ProLiant servers will be installed over the next 12 to 18 months. The hardware will be used to support retail branch operations, including the capture and preparation of teller transactions for transmission to the company's central record-keeping system.
Each server comes equipped with the ProLiant essentials foundation pack containing, HP SmartStart, HP Insight Manager version 7 and additional utilities and tools. The package also includes HP Remote Insight Lights-out Edition to simplify server deployment and management, which will allow the bank's IT staff to manage and monitor the branch servers from a central command centre.
Chuck Hobbs, manager of distributed systems at Wachovia says: "The HP ProLiant servers being deployed in this project will be an important part of our retail branch technology platform - a platform that will increase our operational efficiency as well as help ensure uniform customer service across all branches and all product lines."
He says the selection of HP ProLiant servers for the branches came about in part as a result of Wachovia's experience in using earlier ProLiant server models supporting other applications within the bank.
Installation of the new equipment is underway and is expected to be completed mid-2003.