Seguros El Norte Updates IT Infrastructure with IBM PureSystems; adding new Social and Mobile Capabilities for Insurance Customers

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina, April 23, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that El Norte S.A, one of the largest insurance companies in Argentina, will deploy PureSystems to improve their IT infrastructure and help speed the deployment of new customer facing applications. In addition, the company will use PureSystems to launch a new intranet portal to integrate IBM Connections social capabilities as well as an external site for greater social interaction with customers.

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The new PureSystems platform will support El Norte as it consolidates its existing servers and moves to an increasingly virtualized environment.  PureSystems will also help provide increased data protection against external threats.

El Norte recently introduced a new tool for online quote and issue requests for the automotive industry that allows customers to obtain "certificate of proposal" and "mandatory policy" certificates instantly. The company also updated its producer management system, which allows policy holders to complete an inquiries form and conduct other operations online.

"We have been working with IBM since 1980, and when the time came to integrate our server, services, applications and resources we decided to implement PureSystems because we needed a unique centralized infrastructure," said Horacio Benedicto, manager of IT Infrastructure, El Norte Insurance Company. "We needed additional processing power and storage to unify a number of different technologies and prepare for future business growth."

In addition to PureSystems, El Norte has added an integrated instant messaging environment based on Lotus/Domino to improve internal collaboration and unify all email platforms. The new environment will be combined with IBM Connections to help optimize internal communication and allow the creation of communities, wikis and blogs.

"PureSystems help IT leaders to have more time and resources to invest in critical or strategic tasks," said Diego Rinaldi, Commercial Director of IBM Argentina. "The ease of use in PureSystems allows clients to integrate all of the elements of their infrastructure, both physical and virtual. This helps ensure a stable environment, with sufficient capacity to provide optimal performance and greater flexibility to adapt to the changing market dynamics."

Based in San Francisco, Cordoba – El Norte has nine branches and a network of 600 business centers within Argentina, with additional commercial representatives located in Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia and Brazil.

Working with Business Partner Solutions Avnet Technology Argentina, IBM provided a solution composed of PureFlex, V7000 storage, switches, LAN / SAN redundancy scheme, UPS and perimeter security systems. Software includes IBM Lotus Notes / Domino, IBM Sametime, Connections and the IBM Customer Experience Suite.

The IBM PureSystems family offers clients an alternative to current enterprise computing models, where multiple and disparate systems require significant resources to set up and maintain. PureFlex System enables organizations to more efficiently create and manage an infrastructure.

PureApplication System helps organizations reduce the cost and complexity of rapidly deploying and managing applications. PureData System is tuned for cloud computing and can consolidate more than 100 databases on a single system. In addition to the common web application patterns supported by PureApplication System, the combination of both PureData and PureApplication Systems can be used for end to end transaction workloads.

For more information on IBM PureSystems visit: www.ibm.com/ibm/puresystems

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SOURCE IBM