PARIS, Forum Stockage 2003, October 9, 2003 - Cisco Systems® today announced that Groupama Asset Management, a division of Groupama, France's leading insurance group, is to improve its business continuity infrastructure using the mutiprotocol capabilities of the Cisco MDS 9000 family of storage area networking (SAN) switches as the foundation for real-time data backup between the company's Paris headquarters and a remote data center.

The deployment will strengthen Groupama Asset Management's business continuity capabilities by providing the company with two identical sets of asset management information at all times, mirrored in remote locations.

Alain Boggero, IT manager at Groupama Asset Management, said the business felt it was important to have an end-to-end Cisco setup. "Deploying Cisco SAN technology will help enable us to implement consistent quality of service (QoS) policies across our LAN switching, voice and storage architectures," he said. "This means we can improve the cost-effectiveness of our IP network and at the same time easily introduce features, such as virtual SANs (VSANs), which meet specific business objectives."

The equipment deployed are a pair of fully redundant Cisco ONS 15530 DWDM (dense wavelength-division multiplexing) multiservice aggregation platforms, one at each site, and Cisco MDS 9216 Multilayer Intelligent fabric switches to provide the business with cost-effective connectivity of its Fibre Channel-based SAN to its existing IP network infrastructure using iSCSI (Internet Small Computer Systems Interface) transport technologies. The division - formerly known as Finama Asset Management - was the first French business to create an iSCSI-based SAN using Cisco SN 5420 storage routers.

"This deployment puts Groupama Asset Management at the forefront of business continuity practice, with the capability of maximising full redundancy of data in real time, using a cost-effective technology platform that has the potential for future gigabit scalability," commented Marcus Chambers, operations director for storage networking, Cisco Systems EMEA. "It allows storage traffic to be treated as just another data type that is overlaid on top of the Cisco AVVID infrastructure to help ensure they can maximize their IP network investment."

This is in addition to Groupama Asset Management's existing LAN infrastructure, based on Cisco Catalyst® 6509 switches, which underpins Groupama's converged voice over IP infrastructure. Groupama Asset Management is also deploying Cisco IP phones and a voice over IP-based call center using Cisco IP Contact Center technology.

About Groupama Asset Management

Groupama Asset Management, known as Finama Asset Management since 1999, is the asset management arm of the number one French mutual insurance group, Groupama. Handling nearly 50 billion euros, Groupama Asset Management ranks among the top ten French companies in its sector. Specializing in active, long-term asset management, it is recognized for its activity in Europe, its core business zone. In addition, strategic alliances in key sectors allow Groupama Asset Management to offer and manage financial products on major international markets for its clients. For more information, visit www.groupama-am.fr.