AG pioneers new IT-infrastructure
AG successfully delivered the largest IT-project in its history, migrating its IT mainframe to a network of distributed Windows servers. The scale and complexity of this enormous re-platforming project positions AG as a real pioneer in the world of IT.
What made this project so complex?
AG has established an innovative and secure platform that is more flexible and open to new technologies. This new IT infrastructure allows AG to meet the expectations of its customers in a market that is increasingly digital savvy.
The complexity of this migration cannot be understated: more than 80 million lines of code to an infrastructure that supports 14 million transactions per day. With all business IT applications now running on a network of distributed Windows servers, AG finally said goodbye to the mainframe, a technology that has existed since the 1960s.
The customers have not noticed anything about this whole operation, neither have most of the employees. But behind the scenes, the challenge for the IT teams was gigantic. In a matter of days, all the company's data and applications were transferred to a new IT infrastructure. There are very few organisations worldwide that have taken the plunge and made such a transition. It is certainly a daring and ambitious choice in the financial sector, because ultimately IT is the basis of all activities.
Philippe Van Belle, Chief Information & Technology Officer AG
What are the benefits of replatforming?
By making the systems more open, AG is better positioned to keep pace with digital developments and roll out new technologies. In parallel with the replatforming project, AG also created a new data platform. The combination of both projects offers AG a new data backbone which is common to operational and analytics systems, reducing fundamentally the distance between operational and analytics systems, which is the essence of real Data Driven foundations… This will allow the business to create more convenient digital experiences for all stakeholders.
AG also acquired complete autonomy over its infrastructure, facilitating the transformation and continuous evolution of its applications. And with up to 75% reduction of the IT system’s Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) costs are better managed and controlled.
Additionally, through this project AG’s IT teams learned a new set of skills that will be essential for the maintenance and development of the new platform that will allow them to roll-out exciting new development projects.
"Replatforming" in numbers
- 80 million lines of code
- 100TB of data
- 14 million transactions per day
- 60,000 batches* per day
- More than 600 people involved in the project
*A batch is a data processing mode that follows an automatic sequence of commands to be executed by a computer. To start this procedure, the programmes to be executed or the data to be processed are grouped into batches.
CIO of the Year
AG laid the groundwork for a bright digital future and this project epitomised the meaning of teamwork. And it didn’t go unnoticed. The general public and an expert jury from Belgian IT magazine Data News awarded AG’s CIO Philippe Van Belle CIO of the year. A tribute and recognition for the whole IT team!
