By Chris Alberding, Senior Director of SASE, SSE and SD-WAN, Windstream Enterprise
From contactless payments, cryptocurrency, online investments and mortgage applications, and everything in between, modern banking is quickly being shaped by customers’ most pressing wants and high-tech needs. These demands are influenced by the endless possibilities that technology delivers in every aspect of our daily lives.
For The First National Bank of Long Island, meeting their customer expectations starts with providing extraordinary service, a customer-first approach, and modern digital systems. But the reality of outdated and slow network connectivity was becoming a barrier to ensuring these contemporary banking capabilities and experiences to customers—and this financial institution was determined to address any and all connectivity roadblocks by implementing the right technology.
In order to grow and serve its community as a truly local independent bank, First National Bank of Long Island made critical investments into upgrading its IT infrastructure with VMware SD-WAN as a managed service from VMware partner Windstream Enterprise.
Technology is a competitive advantage
Digital transformation for financial institutions is a key enabler of new business practices that will open the door to new customers and new opportunities. The First National Bank of Long Island wanted to adopt new technology to improve their service at physical branches, while also engaging in efficient ways to make their customers’ money transfers more flexible, empower seamless mobile banking, and design an automated system to simplify residential mortgage applications.
To accomplish this full list of digital initiatives, the First National Bank LI started by modernizing its network connectivity with the implementation of VMware SD-WAN, supported by Windstream Enterprise managed services.
When Daniel Viola, vice president and director of information technology for the First National Bank LI, first heard about VMware SD-WAN, he also learned about VMware’s partnership with Windstream Enterprise in an industry magazine rating the fully managed service provider as one of the best VMware managed-service shops. The financial institution was eager to partner with the tech and managed service providers to get VMware SD-WAN up and running at all of the bank’s 44 locations, with more branches to follow.
Reaping the benefits of VMware SD-WAN and Windstream Enterprise managed services
Since implementing VMware into their IT infrastructure, Viola has seen a significant improvement in the network connectivity that supports their customers’ banking needs. First and foremost, the increased bandwidth allows the institution to run bank-critical software more flawlessly and makes it simpler to set up connections for new branches as the financial institution continues to grow—especially with the hands-on support from Windstream Enterprise. “Going from T1 lines to VMware SD-WAN is amazing. It’s a paradigm shift. It’s huge. And we are experiencing better than 98 percent uptime with Windstream Enterprise,” said Viola.
While Viola’s team can easily make small changes at individual branches, Windstream Enterprise steps in to do the heavy lifting. They have complete visibility and control into their network through the Windstream Enterprise WE Connect customer portal, which allows for faster troubleshooting if anything big or small would arise.
The significant improvement in bandwidth enables a number of new business practices and use cases for the First National Bank LI, including unlimited video collaboration, multimedia file sharing, running bank-critical software and freeing up the time for Viola and his team to prioritize more strategic initiatives. On top of these positive outcomes and tremendous improvement in uptime, VMware SD-WAN drives greater efficiency and cost savings across all of their bank operations. One of the projects they’re currently working on with VMware SD-WAN is resulting in a savings of about $80,000 a year for the bank.
With VMware SD-WAN, everyone wins
All of these benefits experienced by the First National Bank LI also result in positive changes to the way customers are served. Greater bandwidth helps the bank more easily access customers’ records and eases the lending process for its clients who are focused on commercial and residential mortgage loans. Customers and employees both can take advantage of the flexibility of the VMware SD-WAN network and do business in any branch via remote desktop. The outcome is a superior customer experience.
“Because we’re a community bank, we can be more flexible in how we do business in our community,” says Viola. “Now that we have the bandwidth, the business side of the bank can tell us what they would like to do, and I can say go for it because we can support you.”
In addition to empowering their customers with modern baking capabilities, the partnership between VMware and Windstream Enterprise has enabled the bank to grow quickly and modernize the rest of its IT infrastructure. “For about the next five years, we will be able to focus on business rather than having to worry about capacity and network, which is huge,” says Viola.
Learn more
To learn more about the First National Bank LI’s experience implementing VMware SD-WAN, read the full customer story here.
To explore the benefits of managed services provided with Windstream Enterprise, visit their website.
About the author
Chris Alberding oversees the company’s network and security solutions, and has global responsibilities for product revenue forecasts and budgets, as well as strategic and tactical expertise in product management, marketing, process design and sales operations.
