7445_10_MISSION CRITICAL.qxd 16/9/08 13:04 Page 1
NEWS & ANALYSIS ■
■ MISSION CRITICAL
A SHOWCASE FOR ORGANISATIONS THAT
NAME: Quinn-Insurance
HAVE SUCCESSFULLY MANAGED CHANGE
The Quinn-Insurance building
THE BUSINESS
Quinn-Insurance is the business-
to-business division of one of
Ireland’s largest insurers. The
company has built a reputation for
driving down insurance quotes
through focusing on value and cus-
tomer service. It is also one of the
fastest-growing insurance
providers in the country since it
was founded 12 years ago and has
recently been expanding its busi-
ness to provide insurance cover in
the UK, Netherlands and Belgium.
THE CHALLENGE
As a result of recent growth,
Quinn-Insurance now has more
than a million customers and a
presence in European markets
beyond its home base. Consequently,
it needed to upgrade its core
web-serving platform to ensure it
could handle greater numbers of
customers visiting its website.
THE STRATEGY
Quinn-Insurance undertook inten-
sive testing to find the right plat-
form to support its online business,
looking in particular at integration THE BENEFITS all of the company’s internet-based
with IBM WebSphere and the The deployment has resulted in activity is supported by a single
ability to handle very heavy loads. improved website performance and operating system, freeing up highly
SecureLinx, a Novell business has already begun paying for itself, skilled employees to work on other
partner, provided consultancy according to CJ Johnston, IT projects.
during the three-month long server and desktop manager with
implementation period. Quinn-Insurance. THE VERDICT
“We’ve already started to see a Jacqueline de Rojas, Novell UK
THE SOLUTION healthy return on investment from and Ireland managing director,
Quinn-Insurance chose SUSE our standardisation on SLES from believes SLES is one of the leading
Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) Novell. The website is considerably Linux server distributions currently
from Novell to support its internet more responsive for end users, on the market.
sales channel. It opted for SLES and we now typically handle four “Novell’s Linux server solutions
ahead of other Linux distributions times as many quotes as we did give businesses a much greater
because of the solution’s resilience, before. Automated XML requests flexibility and are scalable,
security and performance. from partner websites are also inexpensive and easy to maintain.
Running on more than 20 completed and returned within Quinn-Insurance’s decision to
servers, SLES handles over 85,000 seconds.” deploy a Novell Linux server envi-
insurance quotes daily, combining Another key driver behind the ronment is a testament to SLES’s
both high availability and perform- project has been a lower support capabilities of handling increased
ance to deliver optimal service to burden for Quinn-Insurance’s IT workloads and minimising IT
existing and potential customers. staff. Since the implementation, support requirements.”
10 Knowledge Ireland September 2008
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