Qmoe For Financial Services Wp090860

Qwest® Metro Optical Ethernet for Financial Services

Delivering Secure, Scalable Connectivity Across Metro Areas

I N C O L L A B O R AT I O N W I T H

As competition in the financial services sector intensifies and the regulatory climate tightens, the adoption of personalized services such as those related to retirement, investments, taxes, and estate planning to name a few, continues to ac-celerate. One thing is clear in this environment – the demand for secure, reliable, robust, high bandwidth connectivity continues to rise. Qwest Metro Optical Ethernet, or QMOE™, is a flexible, highly scalable and reliable solution that delivers switched, Ethernet connectivity to enable banks, brokerage firms and other financial services institutions to extend their local area networks to other metro sites for increased efficiency with traffic prioritization.

QMOE is backed by Qwest’s Spirit of Service®, which provides technical expertise, responsive account management, and world-class services that exceed customers’ expectations for quality, value, and reliability.

Introduction 1

Differentiating Financial Services 2

What is Qwest® Metro Optical Ethernet? 3-4

Supporting Online Financial Services 5-6

Delivering Non-Stop Transaction Services 7

Ensuring Regulatory Compliance 8

Reducing Operating Costs 9

Alcatel-Lucent Ethernet Service Switch 10

Table of Contents

Copyright © 2008 Qwest All Rights Reserved. Not to be distributed or reproduced by anyone other than Qwest entities.

Financial services firms continue to offer more feature options, and more sophis-ticated, online transaction capabilities to differentiate themselves and enable their customers to access account information and transact business whenever and from wherever they choose. For example, to reinsert the personal service that the industry was based on, new “click to talk” options allow customers to access a live representative from within a Web portal, putting additional demands on connectiv-ity requirements. Given the rapid adoption of these services, it’s no surprise that the Meta Group estimates that a network outage can cost a financial institution more than $1.5 million per hour in lost revenue.

With FDIC, FINRA, NASD, SEC, NYSE, SOX, GLBA1, Basel II and other members of the alphabet soup of regulation involved, compliance is not new to the financial services industry. But the implications of some regulations, including Sarbanes-Oxley that has been in effect for a number of years, remain unclear. What is clear is that financial institutions will be held accountable for the security, integrity, and surviv-ability of customer data, increasing demands on the networks that interconnect their facilities.

Qwest® Metro Optical Ethernet, or QMOETM, offers a highly scalable, reliable, se-cure, and cost effective solution to meet the connectivity demands of the evolving financial services industry, between multiple locations, across metro areas. QMOE has also been shown to deliver greater service flexibility – an institution can obtain precisely the amount of bandwidth required – over a network that allows custom-ers to upgrade and increase capacity quickly.

Introduction

1

1(FDIC) Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation; (FINRA) Financial Industry Regulatory Authority; (NASD) National Association of Securities Dealers; (SEC) Securities and Exchange Commission; (NYSE) New York Stock Exchange; (SOX) Sarbanes-Oxley; (GLBA) Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.


As the financial services industry continues to change – to experience consolida-tion among larger firms; to offer new, more sophisticated services at lower costs; to comply with ever increasing regulation – IT managers focus on four operational imperatives:

Supporting Online Financial ServicesThe number of online banking transactions and stock trades continues to grow. In an industry based on personal service, financial institutions build more robust customer relationship management capabilities into their online applications.

Delivering Non-Stop Transaction ServicesFinancial services firms know that disruptions in network operations can cost millions of dollars in direct and indirect losses; that delivering fast, non-stop transaction services depends on a robust, flexible, resilient network.

Ensuring Regulatory ComplianceFinancial services firms are subject to stringent regulatory requirements gov-erning securities transactions, recordkeeping, fair credit reporting, auditing, and business continuity planning, as well as those related to disclosure of personal information.

Reducing Operating CostsWith ever increasing pressure to improve productivity and profitability, IT managers know that they must achieve the first three imperatives while reducing costs and improving resource utilization.

Differentiating Financial Services

2


Qwest Metro Optical Ethernet service, also called QMOETM, combines the sim-plicity and low cost of Ethernet with the speed and reliability of optical fiber to deliver flexible, highly scalable connectivity between branches, brokerage offices, call centers, and data centers across a metropolitan area. QMOE is available in point-to-point and multipoint service configurations, with bandwidth available in manage-able increments from 10 Mbps to 1 Gbps. Traffic flows securely as Ethernet virtual circuits (EVCs) across a highly reliable network infrastructure.

QMOE seamlessly extends access to customer data and business applications across a metro area. QMOE can enable a representative, in a branch or a call center, to assist customers with complicated transactions in real time. The represen-tative can access a complete customer history, perhaps with market data needed for a stock purchase, complete the transaction and send an electronic confirma-tion, all with the utmost in privacy and security. In addition to IP-centric applications, QMOE is ideal for integrating voice, video, and Internet traffic to eliminate network overlays.

Qwest® Metro Optical Ethernet

3


Qwest Metro Optical Ethernet

4


Qwest® Metro Optical EthernetQ

MO

E Be

nefit

s

Securely connects multiple facilities across a metropolitan area•

Point-to-point and multipoint service available•

Supports adoption of on-line financial services applications•

Offers unparalleled scalability to precisely match bandwidth to requirements•

Delivers high availability – up to 99.9% with the Quality of Service feature•

Enables control over routing and traffic priority•

Is more cost-effective solution overall than other service options•

Is backed by the Qwest Spirit of Service• ®

QM

OE

Bene

fits

4

Qwest offers a Quality of Service (QoS) feature with QMOETM that enables finan-cial services firms to prioritize network traffic by type to help ensure availability and efficiently manage network resources. Priority 1, for example, might be reserved for mission-critical market data that require immediate connections. Priority 2 might be used for specific financial transactions and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications; Priority 3 for regular business data; and Priority 4 for commu-nications that only require best effort service. Many financial institutions also prefer QMOE because it enables them to control routing and traffic priority.

Qwest can assist banks and other financial services firms with the design and deployment of customized solutions through the Qwest® AdaptiveBuild® process, supported by Qwest technical experts in the Qwest National System Design Center. QMOE solutions are highly reliable and backed by a written Service Level Agreement (SLA) that defines performance objectives. The Qwest Network Op-erations Center (NOC) continually monitors the health of the network to support SLAs.


5

Network Requirements

Private, secure networking• Flexible capacity to accommodate large • planned and unplanned data transmissionsHigh availability and survivability•

Private, secure networking• Scalable bandwidth• High network reliability•

High performance connectivity • Capacity to transport large data files• Quality of Service with high availability•

Qwest Solution

QMOETM supports high capacity, redundant up-link connections enabling switching in the event of a detected failure.

QMOE runs on a private network managed by Qwest. It supports most higher-layer applications and is often used as the preferred transport to connect data centers because of its large capacity.

QMOE supports large image files, with point-to-point EVCs capable of handling large frame sizes.

Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery (BCDR) & StorageDriven by the high cost of network downtime, SOX and other regulations, rapid off-site data mirroring and retrieval is vital to financial services organizations.

Online Financial Services & Transaction ProcessingFinancial services firms are experiencing expanding use of online transaction services for home bank-ing, stock trading, retirement fund management and other applications.

Digital Image ServicesFinancial services firms use digital files for check images and other documentation that must be read-ily available, in some cases, within specific time periods.Su

ppor

ting

Onl

ine

Fina

ncia

l Ser

vice

s

6


Network Requirements

Real time access to call center applications• Meshed architectures• Scalable bandwidth• Quality of Service•

Real-time, uninterrupted connections to • corporate locationsQuality of Service to support video•

High capacity network for rich media • applicationsQuality of Service to support real-time • applications

Qwest Solution

QMOETM seamlessly extends access to applica-tions across a metro area. The service is ideal for converging voice, video, and data to eliminate network overlays.

QMOE supports QoS for real-time traffic, based on a highly available and resilient network.

QMOE supports remote training, video, data, and voice in an environment with low latency and jit-ter, necessary for sensitive applications.

Customer Care Solutions & Contact Centers“Click to talk / video” solutions that use IP telephony to provide customer support from within on-line applications are becoming more prevalent as financial services firms adopt more sophisticated CRM applications.

Distribution of Financial Market Data & BroadcastsBroadcasting of external data feeds to corporate locations is a critical aspect of financial services business operations.

Conferencing Applications & Remote TrainingUse of video and other media for conferencing, online collaboration, training and professional development.

Supp

orti

ng O

nlin

e Fi

nanc

ial S

ervi

ces

Financial services firms know that disruptions in network operations can cost mil-lions of dollars in direct and indirect losses. Customers expect to complete stock trades rapidly; to take advantage of an ever-growing list of online services at their discretion, 24x7. Qwest solutions keep networks up, accessible, and operating at peak performance.

High AvailabilityThe QMOETM infrastructure utilizes carrier-grade network elements, with stringent reliability requirements, and resilient failure recovery mechanisms to optimize the service for minimal failover administration.

Flexibility/ScalabilityQMOE can support point-to-point and multipoint connections with band-width profiles up to 1 Gbps. Unparalleled scalability, with bandwidth profiles available in 10 Mbps increments from 10 to 100 Mbps, and in 100 Mbps increments from 100 to 1 Gbps, (also at 150 Mbps, complementing tradi-tional private line speeds) allow financial institutions to cost-effectively match QMOE to their requirements.

Quality of ServiceCustomer selected Quality of Service is an optional feature of the QMOE, to enable IT professionals in the financial services industry to manage network resources more efficiently, while ensuring the performance of critical applica-tions.

Delivering Non-Stop Transaction Services

7


Ensuring regulatory compliance depends on secure, resilient transport of volumes of data, often stored on multiple network servers or backed up in remote data centers. QMOETM is provided across a carrier-class optical network with secure facilities governed by strict network policies designed to address the needs of the financial services industry.

SecurityData travels over the QMOE infrastructure as native Ethernet, so many of the security methods used in the LAN can be extended across the metro area. Connections are made through Ethernet virtual circuits (EVCs) that partition traffic securely while maintaining connectivity across all devices. When complemented by stateful firewalls, intrusion detection systems, anti-virus solutions, and the like, security can be efficiently maintained across the network.

Support for Business Continuity/Disaster RecoveryQwest assists financial institutions with the design and deployment of cus-tomized business continuity/disaster recovery solutions through the Qwest AdaptiveBuild® process to ensure the survivability of mission-critical ap-plications, backed by responsive account management and service delivery personnel committed to the Qwest Spirit of Service®.

Ensuring Regulatory Compliance

8


Controlling operating costs is a mandate that is not unique to the financial services industry. As with most businesses, IT managers in banks, brokerage firms, and other institutions must balance that mandate against a need to launch new services and remain competitive. QMOETM supports this balanced approach with unsurpassed flexibility and reliability.

Extended ReachQMOE can securely connect multiple branches, neighborhood banking cen-ters, brokerage offices, and more, enabling financial services professionals to collaborate more easily and better serve a diverse clientele with an equally diverse array of financial services. Plus, with a QMOE solution, efficient BCDR and remote storage plans can be implemented, all with the security, availability, and reliability that ensure regulatory compliance.

Lower IT Management CostsIn addition to eliminating LAN/WAN protocol conversions and the need to support multiple legacy WAN services, QMOE enables financial services firms to converge IP data and applications, voice, video, and Internet traffic on a single network service. QMOE additionally enables the consolidation of servers and remote facilities, further reducing overhead and on-going man-agement costs.

More Cost-Effective OverallQMOE bandwidth costs are typically lower than traditional private line servic-es and those based on synchronous optical networks. Unparalleled flexibility and scalability allows financial institutions to better tailor bandwidth to their specific requirements.

Reducing Operating Costs

9


With industry leading density and performance the Alcatel-Lucent 7450 Ethernet Service Switch router supports scalable, reliable and predictable SLA-based Carrier Ethernet services. The Alcatel-Lucent 7450 ESS router, part of the Service Rout-ing platform, overcomes the limitations imposed by traditional Ethernet switches while minimizing operating expenses to reduce the total cost of ownership.

Dramatically improves network stability, scalability, availability and performance •Quality of Service management enables support for different traffic types •Superior provisioning tools speed deployment of new Ethernet services •

For more information, please contact your Qwest Representative or go to www.qwest.com.

Qwest Metro Optical Ethernet: Qwest Metro Optical Ethernet from Qwest Communications

Corporation is available in selected areas. Rates vary depending on speed and term commitment selected.

Installation charge may apply. Additional equipment may be required. Contact Qwest for availability and

additional restrictions. All marks are the property of their respective companies.

Enabled by Alcatel-Lucent 7450 Ethernet Service Switch


I N C O L L A B O R AT I O N W I T H

10

Documents

Qmoe For Financial Services Wp090860