IT Case Study: Wells Fargo
John Blackman, Wells Fargo Systems Architect
Wells Fargo's Corporate Data Center Looks to Enable Next Generation Devices and Simplify Management with InfiniBand™ Architecture
Wells Fargo has long been a leader in implementing cutting edge technology to improve their diversified financial services. Wells Fargo, who implemented the first secure, interactive banking services Website in 1995, continues to lead the industry in Internet banking customers and services. With over 5,400 stores in the United States, and over 120,000 team members worldwide, Wells Fargo offers banking solutions to over 20 million households across the United States.
Wells Fargo has data centers across the United States, and Systems Architect John Blackman focuses on emerging technologies, specifically in the server and storage industries. Blackman directs implementation of new technology in the Wells Fargo data centers.
"Wells Fargo is a customer-focused and customer-driven company," Blackman explained. "Providing services that enable our customers to succeed drives the success of our company and providing the right information through the best medium available enables both our employees and our customers."
Wells Fargo, like other companies, faces the challenge of a constantly changing technology environment and leveraging server and interconnect hardware from multiple vendors. Wells Fargo deploys technologies of all varieties, and because of the nature of technology today they have to manage each technology differently.
Enter InfiniBand™ Architecture
Wells Fargo, like most companies, is looking for technology that enables easy, rapid and low cost scalability and provides resources on demand. Wells Fargo is investigating and evaluating InfiniBand Architecture and will be prepared to take advantage of it provided the solution delivers on its promise.
"The ability to provide resources on demand, whether processor, memory, network or storage, enables data center operations to tailor the application needs and become flexible to the ever changing demands of our environment, that's the promise of InfiniBand technology." Blackman said.
With improved data center performance, Wells Fargo employees have become more efficient, better serving the needs of their customers.
InfiniBand Architecture could enable deployment of many other technologies, according to Blackman. The bandwidth provided in InfiniBand Architecture could enable the next generation of Wells Fargo products and services to become realities.
Server density is another aspect of the InfiniBand solution that will be a benefit to Wells Fargo, where data center floor space is a premium, according to Blackman.
"InfiniBand has the capabilities to break apart the traditional server and modularize it," Blackman explains. "In time I see racks of nothing but processors, memory modules, and storage components. These resources will be interconnected, scalable, living and will be available for whatever process is needed at the time. They should also be aware of but independent of the operating system and application. Computing Utopia perhaps, but not impossible to achieve."