MENLO PARK, Calif., Nov. 9, 1992 -- Cisco Systems has signed a two-year agreement with Bancomer, Mexico's secondlargest commercial bank, to provide the recently privatizedfinancial institution with the company's latest IBMinternetworking technology. Cisco's multiprotocol routers,primarily AGS+ and MGS models, will be used to construct aBancomer financial services backbone, linking remote sites inMexico and a number of international locations in the U.S.and the United Kingdom.
Bank operations that will be supported by the new CiscoBancomer internet include automated teller machines (ATMs),remote job entry (RJE) terminals, and teller terminals. Theregional centers and Mexico City data centers will beconnected by 64 kilobits-per-second (Kbps) satellite linkswith 9.6Kbps microwave backup circuits.
Bancomer, which relies heavily on IBM 3090s and System88s, will construct its Cisco internet in three phasesstarting this quarter. The first phase will link six datacenters in Mexico City to 46 regional sites and fiveinternational locations. Phase two will connect approximately100 branch banks in Mexico City and 120 branch locationselsewhere in Mexico to the backbone, and phase three bringhundreds of additional branches in Mexico on line. Whencompleted, the Bancomer Cisco internet will comprise some1,000 Cisco routers, making it one of the world's largestmultiprotocol router-based networks.
"We had a need to handle SNA/SDLC traffic today, butwith the requirement to migrate to token ring LAN traffic inthe very near future," said Emilio Guillot, Bancomer'ssubdirector of telecommunications.
"We found Cisco's SDLC Transport and robust remotesource-route bridging capabilities both appealing andeffective for our current IBM internetworking needs, and thetotality of Cisco's five-phase IBM internetworking plan to befar beyond even IBM's own internetworking product statements.This Cisco internet is going to run all of our bank'soperations so it has to be fast, capable, and reliable.
"We also evaluated the IBM solutions offered today bysome of the better known players in the router market. Inshort we found that Cisco's products worked as advertised."
"This agreement with Bancomer is significant for Ciscofor two reasons," said John Chambers, senior vice presidentof Cisco. "First, it shows that our IBM internetworkingtechnology is being accepted by the financial community, andsecond, this agreement represents Cisco's first significantpenetration of the LatinAmerican market."
To support the Bancomer internet and to foster otherbusiness opportunities, Cisco will provide direct supportpersonnel in Mexico. This team will work closely withConsorcio Red Uno, Cisco's authorized distributor in MexicoCity, and RSD (Redes y Systemas de Datos), the systemsintegrator for the network implementation.
Bancomer is the largest commercial bank in Mexico,headquartered in Mexico City, and is a leader in utilizingtechnology to provide an ever-expanding array of customerservices. Bancomer was purchased from the Mexican Governmentin 1991 as part of the privatization program of Mexico's corebusinesses. Bancomer has approximately 700 branchesthroughout Mexico as well as offices in the U.S., Europe, andthe Far East. Bancomer is a wholly owned subsidiary of one ofthe largest Mexican financial and industrial groups based inMonterey, Mexico, whose holdings include Groupo Visa,leasing, factoring, and brokerage operations.
Cisco Systems, Inc., is the leading worldwide supplierof high-performance, multimedia and multiprotocolinternetworking products, including routers, bridges,communication servers and network management software. Ciscotechnology can be used to build enterprise-wide networkslinking an unlimited number of geographically dispersed LANs,WANs, and IBM SNA internetworks. In the United States, Ciscois traded over-the-counter under the NASDAQ symbol CSCO.
Posted: Nov 10 10:18:08 1992
