Canada Trust

Success Story

Overview

Incorporated in 1855, Canada Trust is one of Canada's first mortgage companies and Canada's first trust company. Headquartered in London, Ontario, Canada Trust is focused on four key areas of personal financial services: day-to-day banking services, lending, wealth management and insurance.

Serving more than 3.7 million customers, Canada Trust has approximately 16,000 employees, a network of 441 retail branches and 890 automated banking machines (ABMs), as well as other service delivery channels including EasyLine™ 24-hour telephone banking and EasyWeb™ Internet banking.

Canada Trust is an integrated entity comprising Canada Trustco Mortgage Company and The Canada Trust Company. Both companies operate under the federal Trust and Loan Companies Act and are subsidiaries of CT Financial Services Inc. In February 2000, CT Financial Services was acquired by TD Bank Financial Group. The combined retail banking operation will be called TD Canada Trust.

Challenge

When Canada Trust began Year 2000 preparations, it quickly became obvious that IT had to make more than 5,000 desktops Y2K-compliant, keep them compliant through 2000, reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) and improve service to staff.

At the time, employees at 31 sites in 18 cities were connected via the corporate network to a collection of disparate and non-Y2K-compliant hardware platforms, 53 production file/print servers and 45 production Novell NetWare for SAA gateways. Standardization on the desktop side, combined with remote management capabilities on the network side, was deemed critical in order to fulfill the bank's business objectives.

"Before we started the Y2K corporate desktop project, we were in a state of controlled anarchy," recalls Tim Houghton, Canada Trust's Senior Architect, LAN Technologies, Computer and Network Services. "We educated our executives on the business benefits of standards and processes. Today, our robust operating environment is based on a standard hardware and software platform with a managed desktop. Novell's directory-based technology has given us that freedom."

Novell solution

"Today, our robust operating environment is based on a standard hardware and software platform with a managed desktop. Novell's directory-based technology has given us that freedom."

Tim Houghton
Canada Trust's Senior Architect, LAN Technologies
Computer and Network Services

Revamping an entire organization is no simple feat. Armed with only a five-month timeframe, Houghton and his Y2K desktop project team worked closely with Novell and IBM Global Services to determine the best solution.

The first step was to standardize on the desktop from both a hardware and software perspective. More than 3,500 new IBM Pentium PCs were purchased, replacing a collection of 386- and 486-based machines, while another 1,500 desktops were upgraded. Lotus and Microsoft products comprised the set of basic standards common to most people.

Next, Canada Trust turned to its attention to the network. A longtime Novell customer, Canada Trust understood the power of a directory-based platform and was keen to extend its capabilities to deploy applications and manage workstation profiles from a central location. Novell ZENworks was the answer.

Short for Zero Effort Networks for users, ZENworks automates desktop management, using the power of Novell Directory Services (NDS) to provide application, workstation and remote management. By automating various redundant administrative activities, ZENworks cuts costs by minimizing the time users and network administrators must devote to workstation management. Users are more productive while administrators are free to concentrate on more critical issues.

"By providing remote network management capabilities, we have been able to increase efficiency and reduce costs by $500,000 (CDN) per year," says Houghton, whose team worked closely with Novell Consulting to ensure the smooth implementation of ZENworks. "In-person support to fix software problems has been reduced by 70 percent. Through standardization, we have reduced our software titles by 55 percent (from 917 to 418), lowering the number of software licences significantly. Through ZENworks and NDS, we can ensure there are no duplications of software titles or functions. All software is now centrally installed, considerably reducing our total cost of ownership."

Because software is centrally deployed, Canada Trust's users have faster access to the applications they need when they need them.

"In our old environment, we would never have attempted to distribute a new software version to 6,000 users," says Houghton. "With ZENworks we can and the difference is incredible."

Virus detection has also been made easier with ZENworks. Previously, virus software distribution was a lengthy procedure conducted via diskette. Today, it's distributed through ZENworks, with anti-virus updates dispatched to all desktops bi-weekly, on average.

Because ZENworks is built on Novell Directory Services, Canada Trust has been able to empower its users in completely new ways.

"One of our key objectives was to give users the ability to roam anywhere within the corporate LAN environment and have access to their own desktop, their own data and their own applications from wherever they happen to log in," says Houghton. "We couldn't have done that without NDS."

Results

According to Houghton, TCO in the LAN environment goes well beyond administration overheads. It involves the maintenance of hardware devices, the number of software licences requiring maintenance and support, training issues and more.

For example, previously, Canada Trust hired an outside contractor for deskside support. But now, with ZENworks, a workstation can be rebuilt remotely. All new software applications are deployed with accompanying computer-based training, reducing the reliance on peer support and the number of help desk calls. New employees are easily added through the directory service.

Canada Trust's next phase is to incorporate Novell BorderManager Enterprise Edition to securely connect users to the corporate intranet. BorderManager improves network performance and security at borders between networks by controlling outside access to the intranet and user access to the Internet while allowing for remote access to both.

"At Canada Trust, we are very focused on availability and response time," he says. "We measure the satisfaction of our customers even for internal systems. In a recent service quality survey, users awarded the IT team a four-plus out of a possible five for the desktop deployment. We couldn't have done it without Novell and the power of the directory."