NNPC Headoffice

Emma Okonji
 
In a bid to overcome its changing set of business demands, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), recently signed a partnership deal with WECO Systems for a complete overhaul of the architectural design of its Data Centre.

The essence is to simplify operations, enhance better use of assets, and reduce costs, while also improving application performance and end user experience through increased availability, speed, and agility of services.

The NNPC’s existing infrastructure had served it for years, but was beginning to be challenged by the need to provide more bandwidth for applications while meeting the need to physically separate traffic for the various departments. According to the company, within the data centre, bundling links to increase bandwidth was a complicated operation demanding a lot of extra cabling.

NNPC evaluated several proposals and selected the solution presented by WECO Systems, a Cisco Tier One Gold partner, who then investigated the technology options and came up with a better choice to re-design the NNPC infrastructural network using Advanced Cisco Nexus Series Switches, instead of upgrading the existing infrastructure.

According to WECO Systems, “the Cisco Nexus platform is a technology foundation and key enabler of Cisco Data Centre Business Advantage, an architectural approach that provides tighter integration of servers, networks, and storage systems, which in turn helps to deliver new improvements in performance and cost efficiency.”

Pleased with the new architectural design, NNPC’s General Manager, Mr. Don Aholu, said: “Since the Cisco solution was implemented, network stability issues have become a thing of the past and Information Technology (IT) help desk incidents have declined. As a result, IT staff can make more efficient use of their budget and staff can spend time focusing on more strategic initiatives to improve customer service across departments.

At the unveiling of its data centre, Aholu further reiterated that hosting of NNPC mission critical business solutions in the data centre instead of with third parties was expected to yield savings of $5 million per annum for the corporation.

He explained that with the added Cisco security features, IT management had better control of the risks associated with the access for some numerous computers serving the large corporation whether wired or wireless.

The WECO Systems approach ensures that the web security appliance protects users from accessing malicious websites and prevents malware and virus infections. IT administrators can now control access to online web applications and securely allow users to use social networking sites and other Web 2.0 sites for collaboration.

The prevalence of excellent local expertise for Cisco technology, including the skilled consulting and deployment provided by WECO Systems, allowed the IT department to achieve a swift, easier-than-expected implementation within critical timeframe, Aholu said, adding that NNPC could now take full advantage of the local resources and the robust features of its new data centre to stay on track with new technologies as they emerge for years to come.