S&T Ukraine planned and completed the implementation of the IT infrastructure for the Ukrainian insurance company PROVIDNA in only six weeks. This modern IT system, which will provide optimal support for the company’s growth strategy as well as the flexibility required for future developments, was installed without disruptions to the company’s operations.

Founded in 1995, PROVIDNA is one of the leading insurance companies in Ukraine with over 25 regional branches, and more than 220 sales and customer offices throughout the country. The company has more than 1,500 employees and over 1,700 active insurance consultants. Based on their growth strategy, PROVIDNA required a new IT system which would satisfy the performance and quality requirements necessary to support the company’s business processes. S&T Ukraine, which has considerable experience in these types of systems, was entrusted with the development and implementation of the new core IT infrastructure and successfully completed the project in a record time of just six weeks. ”S&T Ukraine’s experience and our professional methods in implementing modern IT solutions for companies with geographically distributed structures enabled us to meet the requirements set by the customer. The project was completed in the shortest possible time and without disturbing day-to-day operations”, explained Christian Rosner, S&T’s CEO.

Absolute effectiveness and scalability

The main goals of the project were the effective storage of information for an increasing number of customers, more rapid processing of data and ensuring all company employees have the necessary communications tools. The system was to be installed as rapidly as possible, had to be easy to scale, capable of developing over the next five to ten years and of providing maximum quality with low implementation costs. Irina Sirenko, Chairperson of IC PROVIDNA’s Board of Directors: “Important changes within the company demanded a radical improvement of the IT infrastructure. The planned implementation of centralized business applications and the intensive development of regional branches added to the importance of this project. Our plans for the intensive development of the company did not allow us to separately develop the IT system before deploying the network regionally. This in turn meant the system had to fulfil three important requirements: rapid implementation in accordance with the company’s development, absolute effectiveness as well as scalability. The system was installed without disrupting business operations, and future IT requirements will not involve changes to the IT architecture or the primary IT infrastructure nodes.”

Lean but efficient structure

The new IT system was installed in PROVIDNA’s new office building, which presented S&T’s experts with a further challenge – migrating the existing user, system and location infrastructure. The new centralized system architecture means that only a minimum infrastructure is required in the regional offices. This allowed for optimal consolidation of the hardware, an optimization of the number of software licenses required, a reduction of the number of IT employees in the computer centre and, at the same time, the uninterrupted availability and maintenance of all IT services. The project was carried out with products and solutions from such recognized suppliers as HP, EMC, Microsoft and TrendMicro.

Growth on the Ukrainian IT services market

According to IDC, the Ukrainian IT services market will grow in 2008 by 21.6% – the largest percentage in all countries in which S&T is active. IDC experts forecast a growth of 19.7% for the IT market as a whole, although at a somewhat lower absolute volume. Rosner: “Indications for the Ukrainian market show continued high growth potential for the coming years, until it reaches western European levels in absolute terms. We have been present in Ukraine since 1983 and are actively shaping market development there.”

S&T in Ukraine

In Ukraine, S&T is one of the larger system integrators and one of the leading network providers as well as one of the leading suppliers of IT services for the financial services and telecommunications sector. The approximately 200 employees at two locations in Kiev provide services for such high profile customers as Kyivstar GSM, Ukretelecom, Astelit, Arcelor Mittal Krivyy Rig, Lukoil-Ukraine, Raiffaisen Bank Aval.