Financial services firm consolidates data centres

Financial services firm IOOF has embarked on a large-scale data centre consolidation project that will see it shrink its number of national facilities from 11 to two.

The company, which offers investment management, superannuation and retirement-related services, had chosen Melbourne for its consolidated data centres.

The work was expected to take about 18 months to complete. The company was already several months into migrating data centres, according to sources.

The consolidation was part of a project known as 'Data Centre and Infrastructure Realisation', chief information officer Andrew Todd said.

It was born out of a company strategy of "business simplification [and] rationalisation" following IOOF's 2009 merger with Australian Wealth Management.

In addition to shrinking the number of data centres it operated, Todd said IOOF was also rationalising its hardware infrastructure, excluding platforms that were needed for legacy systems.

"The objective is to ensure future acquisitions or business changes are simple to integrate into our IT infrastructure - [that they] just 'plugin'," Todd said.

"Ultimately this will produce cost savings through less physical infrastructure [and] software licensing, and improved operational efficiency."