Vietnam Bank Goes Green with IBM

By Anastasia Tubanos, theWHIR.com

September 12, 2008 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — IBM (ibm.com) announced on Friday that it has collaborated with Saigon Commercial Bank to help the company establish a scalable green data center.

According to the most recent announcement, IBM will help SCB transform its current existing data center to a scalable modular data center, “creating a cost-effective and high quality 50 to 100 square meters data center.”

Founded in 1992, SCB, formerly known as Que Do Bank, says it became a well-known name in the Vietnamese financial services sector in 2003 and has been upgrading its technologies and modernizing its internal banking platform since the country entered the WTO.

As one of the “leading joint-stock commercial banks in Vietnam,” SCB teamed with IBM to deploy the data center consolidation with the explicit goals of reducing energy consumption as well as reducing cost, space and IT maintenance, while enhancing the efficiency and capacity of its data center facilities.

The new SMDC solution will enable SCB to lower its data center design costs by around 15 percent compared to that of the old raised-floor data center solution, says the company. SMDC will also enable SCB to bring down implementation costs by 20 percent and operating costs as much as by 40 percent.

“IBM engaged with SCB from the very beginning to understand our critical business needs and design appropriate solutions,” Than Ngoc Minh, chief accountant cum CIO of SCB.  “As one of the leading joint-stock commercial banks in Vietnam, we are expanding our business impressively. We look forward to IBM’s expertise to design and build a globally benchmarked, standardized, scalable and energy efficient facility that can support our dynamic growth plans effectively.”

IBM aims to implement the entire SMDC solution in “a record time” of eight to 24 weeks, compared to the industry norm, which IBM says is at about 18 to 24 months.

Since May 2007, IBM has been partnering with companies around the world as part of Project Big Green, a $1 billion initiative devoted to delivering technologies that help clients increase the level of energy efficiency in their data centers.

Over a year later in July, IBM reported it had launched the second phase of Project Big Green 2.0 in India where it will specifically be targeting large corporate customers in India and will be introducing new products and services, which focus on energy efficiency.

Tags: data center, energy efficiency, IBM, project big green, Saigon Commercial Bank