Referentie NBB

Company description

The National Bank of Belgium is the central bank of Belgium. Since 1850 it performs tasks of general interest at both the national and the international level.

The Department of Information of the National Bank is business critical for the daily operations. It has a wide variety of tasks and responsibilities including:

  • internal and external (ESCB, NCBs, CBFA, etc.) application development projects

  • the development and the installation of an evolutionary computing architecture that is increasingly focused on international and interconnected networks

  • the continuous operation of the infrastructure associated with a strict operational emergency plan (disaster recovery plan)

  • determining the IT security rules, the protection of confidential data and managing access to computer resources

  • managing a data warehouse and an office automation area

  • managing and following IT-contracts

  • working within strict budgetary policies

  • monitoring the CMA costs necessary for the allocation of activities.

  • a constant integration of cost analysis for technological developments and strategic impact

The Department of Infrastructure & Operations (DOIO) is situated within the Department of Information. Its mission is related to the following activities:

  • make proposals on the development of the IT infrastructure that will fit into the vision of the evolution of the computer architecture of the Bank, as defined by the department and Technology Project Management Office

  • concretize the proposals by searching through tenders the appropriate IT resources (hardware and software)

  • order the chosen instruments, install them and monitor their development

  • enable the operational use of these resources

  • use those resources in two computer centers of the Bank for which the department performs the daily management

  • develop and update an emergency plan when a part of the IT resources of the Bank is not available

Within this department, the mission of the Network team relates to:

  • the conception, installation and management of the transport network ( switching / routing)

  • network security appliances (firewalls, load balancers, web application firewalls, SSL termination points, etc.)

  • telephony (analogic, digital, VoIP)

Role of our team

Our consultants stepped in with the specific task of establishing and documenting the network environment through tools that display the real-time situation. In this this way we could improve the transparency of operations of the network infrastructure for other teams that make use of the infrastructure. We initiated, coached and assisted the network team by using and maintaining the CMDB application service Now (SNOW) for the inventory of network CI’s (Asset Management).

Results

Our consultants were able to achieve more clarity and harmony in the IT-operations. They managed to improve the daily operational tasks of the network team, partially by facilitating better communication and information exchange between the network team and other departments. More technical achievements of our team also included:

  • the update of the network infrastructure with 5000 SNOW CMDB-related network components

  • successful  LAN segregation project,made possible by the overview on the subnets, which required implementation and creation required of the VLAN tools
     
  • IP provisioning by creating and implementing an IPAM tool providing a significant relief of the network team, annually a 1000 host IP reservations
  • inventory of CISCO equipment (manual for the stock, automated for operational equipment) providing an accurate picture of the support costs and allow to charge more correctly departments and customers for the material used