Wednesday 29 January 2020
Brussels-based HR services group Partena Professional, which employs 1,900 people, has extended its contract with NRB for the outsourcing of its IBM Mainframe and AS/400 by four years.
The IBM Mainframe is the central computer system for the activities of Partena Professional's Social Secretariat: it hosts, among other things, their payroll engine that calculates salaries. The outsourcing of the mainframe from Partena Professional to NRB goes back to 2011.
In 2012, Partena merged with HDP, a social secretariat in Ghent. In October 2016, Partena Professional also decided to entrust NRB with the management of their central system on AS/400.
At the end of 2018, Partena Professional entrusts NRB with the hosting and operational management of the rest of its ICT environments, i.e. its "distributed" systems, of about 640 servers.
On 5 December 2019, Partena Professional and NRB signed the extension of the two Mainframe and AS/400 contracts for a further four years until 2024.
NRB Mainframe Center
NRB is – after IBM – the most important mainframe centre in Belgium. In 2020, NRB has a total capacity of 25,000 MIPS. Its latest-generation IBM Mainframes (z14 today and z15 in a couple of months) are hosted in its own data centers in Herstal and Villers-le-Bouillet (at a distance of 30 km). The two data centres are connected by optical fibre, fully redundant, and meet Tier 3+ standards according to the Uptime Institute. Real-time mainframe replication ensures that no data can be lost and customers can continue working without interruption, even in the event of a disaster at either site. NRB's Mainframe team consists of more than 150 experts: developers, architects, DBAs, system specialists and production managers.
"The collaboration between NRB and Partena Professional has become a solid partnership," confirms Pierre-François Declercq, CIO of Partena Professional. "The relationship between the two companies is one of trust and continuity. Not only do we rely on NRB's support and advice, but because of its scale – particularly in the Mainframe world – and its privileged partnership with IBM, we have access to technology, expertise and conditions that we would never have had access to as a "small" Mainframe user."
Modernisation Project
Partena Professional has taken the strategic decision to modernise its mainframe payroll engine through extensive use of API techniques and openness to modern technologies used in customer tools. This modernisation is being carried out with the support of NRB for the following activities; among others: the choice of tools on the mainframe side and support for their implementation, as well as support for the development teams. Thanks to this modernisation, the applications used by Partena Professional customers can access mainframe transactions and data in a strictly secure environment.
"Partena Professional has been a strategic client of NRB for about 10 years," confirms Pascal Laffineur, CEO of the NRB Group. "Not only because it is an important player in the social sector, but also because it sets an example by opting for mainframe continuity and reliability for its core business, while calling on our expertise for its modernisation. The result combines the best of both worlds: a robust, waterproof system that takes full advantage of new digital possibilities such as the cloud, AI and IOT."
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