Direct Line to Success with NetWare

A Customer Showcase Success Story for the Finance Sector

Direct Line Insurance, the UK's leading direct financial services provider, uses NetWare to provide exceptionally high levels of customer care. Established in 1985, on the principle of streamlining the process of handling insurance claims, Direct Line has always used cutting edge technology. The Direct Line Group now also includes many new products including mortgages, loans, savings and PEPs.

Changing Insurance Forever

Direct Line offers essentially that - a direct line. Customers don't pay commission to middlemen, and get first class service and information quickly directly from the firm. The policies are clearly written, and explain exactly what the coverage is for. Customers frequently access the Internet site (www.directline.co.uk) to use on-line calculators for mortgages and loans as well as games and general information.

It's exceptional customer service puts Direct Line at the forefront of the UK insurance industry. "Our customers are our Number 1 priority and we use the best technology available to meet their needs," affirms Richard Beal, IT Director.

Using cutting edge technology pays off. Seventy percent of their mortgage customers have switched from existing lenders, because Direct Line offers better management of information to help reduce costs.

A High-performance Network

"Being an insurance industry leader, we naturally went to the world's leading network provider, " says Tony Covelli, Principal PC/LAN Analyst. Backing-up their customer focussed approach, Direct Line's intranet system links 1500 employees across 10 sites, enabling swift data transfer and remote access for business executives and users across the company.

Its WAN connects all ten offices. They use ISDN as WAN backup and for remote users.

"I chose NetWare because I've always considered Novell as the market leader in networking; it has excellent performance and fault tolerance," states Covelli.

Since the implementation of NetWare, network response is faster and network reliability has improved. With NetWare's fault tolerance they have even less downtime than they did with NetWare 3.12. Covelli explains, "SFT III allows us to offer stable network operation 24 x 7, whilst still being able to perform software and hardware upgrades."

During the 8 month roll-out, they ensured that all equipment was NDS aware as they didn't want to run bindery emulation. All servers were replaced with Compaq Pro-liants and all equipment was reconfigured.

The servers are now even more stable, performance has increased, and users notice a better response from the network. "Our end users are more productive," Covelli explains, "applications load faster, and documents print quicker." PC Group is Direct Line's IT Group responsible for the network operating system. It's now easier to respond to business needs. "NetWare allows PC Group to respond more quickly to roving users, sharing data across regions, and being able to print anywhere within the company," Covelli states.

Rapid Roll-out

Direct Line uses Novell Application Launcher, which comes free with NetWare, to provide centralised control of applications and the user environment, which reduces network management overhead. From a single administration programme they can see the entire enterprise network and manage users more easily and quickly. "Using NAL to distribute applications or change desktops stops us from having to send IT staff to users' PCS to do the work," states Alan Munns, Consultant PC/LAN Analyst.

"We've achieved a 40% reduction in administration time," states Covelli. This translates into cost savings as well as allowing IT staff more time to focus on issues other than day to day administration.

NDS makes it easier to find information on users, and server usage. "With NW Admin we can search and locate a user in a matter of seconds and then directly manage him from our workstation," Covelli adds.

Simple Security for NT

NDS for NT has also strengthened network security. "By using NDS and trusted trees we are effectively using NDS's security instead of NT's," Covelli affirms. This allows them to use NDS to create local user accounts on the NT workstation and stops their NT domains from being overloaded with user accounts. "It also allows us to prevent users from accessing servers and security information in the NT domain."

"Because NDS gives us a global representation of our entire network, it makes network management much easier," adds Covelli. Installations now take only a quarter of the time.

Direct Line will also Implement BorderManager to act as a firewall restricting unauthorised access to its network and prevent access to inappropriate areas of the Internet. As BorderManager integrates with NDS, it allows our users to roam anywhere with in the company, yet still access the Internet. Because the security policy is linked to username, BorderManager will make it much easier for us to log what each user does, and will help prevent abuse," adds Covelli.

Direct Line is very pleased with Novell technology. "If we had to go through the network selection process all over again, we'd definately choose NetWare again - it's robust and performs well in our environment," asserts Covelli. "Novell's expertise is extremely good, and they've always responded to our needs in a very direct manner."

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