Understanding Aggregation Services for Banking
With offerings from multiple vendors across a number of IT areas, putting together an effective collection of technology services is a major challenge for financial institutions, such as banks and credit unions. As they consider telecommunications, hosting and colocation services and cloud services, these institutions can find it difficult to determine which products and services are necessary to meet their needs, which may be unnecessary and how they will all interact once they’re in place. Additionally, it’s next to impossible for a financial institution to know whether it’s getting the right solution for its IT product and service needs.
An aggregation services team at a trusted technology partner can help banks and credit unions assess their technology needs, identify appropriate products and services and connect institutions with domestic and global vendors. An aggregation team can also assist financial institutions with contract negotiation, implementation, project management and other processes, freeing up bank and credit union IT staffers to focus on more customer-oriented projects.
Some decisions regarding technology solutions aren’t complicated. For example, if a financial institution needs a piece of hardware or software to fulfill a specific function, and only a handful of products will meet the company’s needs, a buying decision can be straightforward. After reviewing product features and pricing, an internal IT manager can quickly make a decision and place an order.
But not everything is so simple. When a bank or credit union is looking to upgrade its networking and communications systems, as well as deciding what data and systems to move off-premises (and how it should carry out a migration), the options can quickly become murky. These are moves that most organizations make only once every several years. Even seasoned IT professionals can feel like first-time car buyers wandering the lot, unsure of exactly what they need, who can best provide it and what they should expect to pay.
The Aggregation Services team at CDW was created precisely to solve this problem. Specifically, the team works with financial institutions and other organizations to help them develop integrated IT plans that incorporate three key areas of technology:
Telecom
- Voice
- Data
- Ethernet
- Wide area networks
Hosting/Colocation Services
- Dedicated cages
- Point of presence
- Rack
- Power
Cloud
- Hosted voice (Voice over IP)
- Backup and disaster recovery
- Hosted Exchange mail and archiving
- Cloud computing and managed hosting
- Desktop as a Service/virtual desktop infrastructure
The Aggregation Services team at CDW represents more than 75 voice and data carriers, 1,100 data centers and 42 cloud platforms. That’s more than 3 million possible combinations of telecom, hosting and cloud vendors — a truly overwhelming number if IT managers don’t have a quick way to identify which providers can best meet their financial institution’s needs.
CDW’s longstanding relationships with these providers allow the Aggregation Services team to immediately eliminate vendors that aren’t a good fit, and instead target vendors that can provide exactly what a financial institution is looking for.
Additionally, each solutions provider has been vetted by CDW. So, no matter which vendors or solutions a bank or credit union ultimately implements, it can feel confident that CDW stands behind them.
Learn more by downloading the "Aggregation Services" white paper.
