Ameritas Increases Business Agility and IT Security with Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure
January 24 2018 - 8:00AM
YASTEST
Single-pane-of-glass management makes network
operations easier and more scalable
SAN JOSE, Calif., Jan. 24, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE)
-- Ameritas, a large insurance company headquartered in Lincoln,
Nebraska, has selected Cisco® computing,
networking and security technology as the foundation for upgrading
its data centers. The goal of the infrastructure upgrade was to
improve agility and operational efficiency while increasing IT
security.
Supporting close to 1000 applications, the new
technology infrastructure has reduced capex by 30 to 40 percent in
switching devices alone and freed up 25 to 30 percent of the
network operations team's time, allowing them to focus on more
strategic initiatives.
Security balanced with
agility
Security and agility are often at odds in the data center, and yet
both are paramount for modern enterprises-especially in the highly
competitive insurance and financial services industry. Striving for
technology-driven innovation and differentiation, the Ameritas IT
department wanted the new data centers to provide an agile
supportive environment for application developers to help bring new
products and services to market quickly.
"Cybersecurity has to be at the forefront of a
company like ours," said Matt Billmeier, a director in IT at
Ameritas. "But it is also the source of perceived delays in
completing new projects. In selecting our new infrastructure
we looked to Cisco to provide both agility and the highest levels
of security possible."
At the heart of the new Ameritas data centers are
Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI), Cisco Unified
Computing System(TM) (Cisco UCS®), Cisco
FirePOWER® Next
Generation Intrusion Prevention System (NGIPS), and the Citrix
NetScaler Application Delivery Controller.
"We found Cisco ACI to be the industry's most
comprehensive and integrated solution, with support for physical,
virtual, and cloud environments, single-pane-of-glass management
and a common policy framework that spans both our data centers,"
said Billmeier. "Network operations immediately became easier and
more scalable because we could configure once and then deploy
across the entire network fabric."
In addition, ACI's integration with the Cisco
FirePOWER NGIPS increases security by providing automated threat
protection. Less human intervention and decision making means
better protection and faster response times for Ameritas. ACI also
improves security by facilitating microsegmentation at the
application layer.
"With our legacy environment, segmentation took a
lot of time and thought," said Billmeier. "But with Cisco ACI, it's
built in. Nothing can connect to anything else without explicit
instruction, so there's no chance of confusion or
miscommunication."
Open Ecosystem
The open Cisco ACI framework has 65 ecosystem members who can take
advantage of the open Application Programming Interface (API) to
integrate their solutions, allowing IT organizations to leverage a
rich set of third-party appliances and solutions with ACI.
Looking Ahead
"We'll set the parameters and then let the network make decisions
on its own. Cisco ACI tells the entire infrastructure how to behave
and respond," said Billmeier.
In the future, Billmeier and his team will be
looking at Cisco Tetration Analytics(TM) as a solution to add more
automation and additional intelligence through application
monitoring and machine learning to make the network smarter and
more adaptable.
Additional Resources
- Learn more about: Cisco ACI overview
- Read: Cisco ACI Ameritas Case Study
- Read: Cisco ACI case studies
- View: Cisco ACI ecosystem partners
- Learn more about: Cisco data center
technology
About Cisco
Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) is the worldwide technology leader that has
been making the Internet work since 1984. Our people, products, and
partners help society securely connect and seize tomorrow's digital
opportunity today. Discover more at thenetwork.cisco.com and follow
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Cisco and the Cisco logo are
trademarks or registered trademarks of Cisco and/or its affiliates
in the U.S. and other countries. A listing of Cisco's trademarks
can be found at www.cisco.com/go/trademarks. Third-party trademarks
mentioned are the property of their respective owners. The use of
the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between
Cisco and any other company.
Cisco ACI is not an affiliate of Ameritas or any
of its affiliates. For more information about Ameritas, please
visit ameritas.com.
Press Relations
Lee Davis
Cisco
650-868-3036
leedavis@cisco.com
Analyst Relations
Aimee Schoaf
Cisco
602-778-2308
aschoaf@cisco.com
Investor Relations
Carol Villazon
Cisco
408-527-6538
carolv@cisco.com
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