As well as being of great historical value, VRT’s central media storage system is also an important tool for today’s radio and television producers.

The news and sports service primarily uses the CMII as a production hub, where journalists can seek out and edit online material; programme-makers mainly use the archive function to search for images, audio clips, photos and documents. Thus the news and sports service’s main requirements are performance-related (because they need to be able to go live rapidly), whereas the programme-makers attach more importance to capacity and availability. This means that the proposed solution must satisfy a number of very strict requirements.

In a first phase, Computacenter will renew and extend the existing storage infrastructure in which all data are kept. For the next five years it will also look after the maintenance and further expansion of the CMII.

The idea is to improve the system’s stability and scalability, and to be future-proof. The new storage capacity will initially be 500 terabytes, and will increase further later on – partly as a result of the switch to HD television. Steps will also be taken to ensure HD compliance, 100% availability (the system must never go offline) and a guaranteed throughput. The solution that will be used for all this consists of a clustered database system on HP servers, HP storage and HP networking.

The new infrastructure should be operational from November 2011.

Lieven Troch, IT Systems Manager at VRT:
“Growth in storage capacity, maintaining high-performance, stable storage and keeping TCO under control are the main challenges in the years ahead. Constant improvement and expansion without any interruption to our services is vital. Computacenter’s expertise and professionalism will be of help to VRT in this.”

Lieven Bergmans, managing director of Computacenter Benelux:
"This is a strategically important project for VRT. We are therefore very pleased to be able to propose a high-quality, stable and scalable solution to them, as an independent partner for infrastructure solutions, and the project is a prestigious one for our Enterprise Technologies Department."

Leuven/Wavre/Ghent/Luxembourg, 20 September 2010
GFI, the European IT services group with a Belgium-based competence center for e-process solutions, announces the acquisition of the Application Services division of Computacenter Belgium. The division’s principal task is to provide support for the IBM Lotus platform. GFI will take over the staff with its expertise as well as the clients. After concluding a partnership with Open Source provider Liferay, this is the second step taken by GFI within a short period with a view to strengthening its market position in the area of collaboration.

Largest Lotus expert group in the BeLux 

GFI, with its 100 Lotus clients and more than 170,000 seats in the BeLux, is today the largest expert group of Lotus professionals in the BeLux. With the take-over of the Lotus activities of Computacenter Belgium, the company is adding some 40 new clients to its portfolio. The acquisition also means that collaboration clients of Computacenter Belgium can henceforth count on the know-how and support of a European collaboration specialist. GFI BeLux is also taking over the staff of Computacenter’s Lotus division.

Pascal Meyers, CEO of GFI Benelux: “Increasing numbers of firms are wondering today how they should move forward with their current collaboration platform: upgrade, migrate to a ‘standard’ solution or use cloud computing solutions for certain aspects? We seek to assist companies with these questions, both in breadth (advice on the strategy to be followed) and in depth (implementing collaboration projects in various technologies). How? By combining our Lotus expertise with (international) project management and a product vendor-independent vision of the future of the collaboration market. An offer which is unique in Belgium.”

Lieven Bergmans, Managing Director of Computacenter Belgium & the Netherlands: “Computacenter’s international strategy is built around infrastructure services and solutions. For our Lotus activities it seemed advisable to go in search of a strategic partner with a strong focus on application services. We found that partner in GFI. They are in a position to continue to guarantee the high quality of our application services.”

Growth ambitions in the collaboration market

The take-over fits within the ambitions of GFI BeLux to become the largest specialized integrator in the collaboration market – as well in advice and implementation as in running the platforms. Meyers explains: “The collaboration market consists for us – besides the increasingly popular cloud computing solutions – of 3 major technology providers: Open Source, IBM and Microsoft. GFI will continue to expand its portfolio of collaboration services and products around these 3 technologies and cloud computing. Today’s takeover follows upon our partnership with Open Source provider Liferay as the second – but not last – logical step in our strategy to strengthen our position in the collaboration market.”

About GFI

GFI is a European IT services provider, founded in France. The company is active in 5 specialized areas: consulting, application services, enterprise solutions, infrastructure services and business software. The group is present in 10 countries, employs about 10,000 people and operates 11 competence centers, 2 software factories and 3 off-shore centers. Its turnover was 663.6 million euro’s as at 31/12/2009. In Belgium the company has offices in Haasrode-Leuven, Wavre and Ghent, with some 150 employees.

For more information: www.gfi.be

About Computacenter

Computacenter is one of Europe’s leading providers of IT infrastructure services. The company helps clients optimise their IT infrastructure by offering a wide range of services. Computacenter provides advice on IT strategy, implements the most appropriate technology from a broad range of products by leading vendors, and manages all or part of the technological infrastructure on the client’s behalf. At each level, Computacenter assists its clients in lowering costs and maximizing IT investments. To this end, Computacenter can draw upon its own extensive European network and on a worldwide network of international partners.

For more information: www.computacenter.be

“It is an honour to present Computacenter as a Cisco Partner Summit regional award winner,” said Thierry Drilhon, Vice President, Worldwide Partner Organisation, Europe, at Cisco. “The Enterprise Partner of the Year Award recognises Computacenter’s performance and achievements as a Cisco channel partner in Europe in 2009.”

Adrian Foxall, Networking Director at Computacenter commented: “Cisco is a key partner for Computacenter in delivering cost-effective and innovative solutions to our customers. Cisco’s technologies are at the heart of our tier IV datacentre, which helps organisations achieve the highest level of IT availability at an affordable price.” “Cisco technologies will play a fundamental role in helping organisations establish scalable and reliable virtual datacentres. We were the first organisation in the UK to deploy a VCE vBlock 2, which our customers can use to validate their datacentre transformation plans. We are delighted to have been selected for this accolade by such an important partner.”

Cisco Partner Summit awards are presented at three levels: regional, theatre and global. Cisco Partner Summit Europe regional awards reflect a partner’s performance in the region.

Bernadette Wightman, managing director, Channels, Cisco UK & Ireland, commented: “Our partnership with Computacenter provides great alignment across both organisations – from board level to sales teams. The close alignment to our architectures, particularly virtualisation, demonstrates the breadth of opportunity for our joint growth going forward.”

Source: Equaterra

Zaventem, January 2009 – SWIFT, the leading global provider of secure financial messaging services, signed a new five year SLA-driven contract with Computacenter for the global support of its internal desktop environment. The contract covers the centralised Service Desk with incident management, request management, and problem management services as well as asset management and on-site support. Computacenter delivers a 24/24 – 5/7 service to 2,100 users in Europe, Asia Pacific and the USA.

8 years of successful cooperation...

Back in 2000, Computacenter was selected by SWIFT for all support services related to hardware and software deployed in SWIFT’s internal IT environment. The Computacenter team based at SWIFT implemented best practice desktop management based on ITIL philosophy.

After the initial contract and two renewals including benchmark exercises, Computacenter have now been delivering this service for eight years. Jurgen Strijkers, Head of Managed Services with Computacenter and Service Manager for SWIFT, explains: “Our global team has been working hard over the last eight years to provide a high quality and cost-efficient service remaining aligned with the ever changing business needs of SWIFT.” Francois Bruyere, SWIFT’s Global Support Manager adds: “I enjoy working with the Computacenter team for their customer oriented “can do” mentality and the focus they put on providing additional value beyond contract boundaries while keeping the costs very much under control”.

...rewarded with a 5-year extension

The contract has now been extended for another five years covering new support services. Thanks to process optimisation, Computacenter was able to deliver these new services partly funded by the savings realised. Andre Croes, Head of SWIFT Internal IT comments: “In these difficult economical times, High quality of service combined with the right price were key drivers for SWIFT to renew the contract.”

Lieven Bergmans, General Manager of Computacenter Belgium concludes: “Over the last eight years, our cooperation with SWIFT has been outstanding and we are grateful to see this rewarded with a five year contract extension.

Beyond meeting contractual service levels, such a long term relationship is only possible where there is continued focus from both SWIFT and Computacenter on innovation, cost reduction and managing change.”

About COMPUTACENTER
Computacenter is a leading European independent provider of IT infrastructure services. We help our customers maximise the value of IT by advising on IT strategy, deploying and integrating appropriate technologies, and managing elements of their infrastructures on their behalf. At every stage we help them minimise the cost and maximise the business value of their IT expenditure.  For more information about COMPUTACENTER, please refer to the website: www.computacenter.com.

About SWIFT
SWIFT is a member-owned cooperative that provides the communications platform, products and services to connect over 8,600 banking organisations, securities institutions and corporate customers in more than 208 countries. SWIFT enables its users to exchange automated, standardised financial information securely and reliably, thereby lowering costs, reducing operational risk and eliminating operational inefficiencies. SWIFT also brings the financial community together to work collaboratively to shape market practice, define standards and debate issues of mutual interest. www.swift.com