Trustees Executors is a substantial financial services organisation specialising in personal and corporate trustee, custody and investment administration services. When the TOWER Group demutualised in 1999, a certain level of rebranding was required to bring all group companies into line before TOWER was listed.

As a result of this rebranding Trustees Executors began trading as TOWER Trust. On 31 July 2003 Sterling Grace purchased TOWER Trust, and the first order of business was to return to the company’s original brand name Trustees Executors Limited.

After the purchase the company had just three months to establish its own technical infrastructure and split from the Tower Group network. After going to the market for a solution provider, Trustees Executors selected IBM Logical as its IT implementation partner.

As part of the sale six senior IT staff from the Tower Group were offered positions with Trustees Executors and joined the company as the new IT division.

Amongst them was IT manager Bruce McPhail, who says the brief for his team and IBM Logical was comprehensive, and included the design of network architecture and implementation of a wide area network, internet security design and implementation, the transfer of Microsoft software licences – and the supply of new servers and network equipment to the company’s staff in Invercargill, Dunedin, Christchurch, Wellington, Tauranga Auckland and Takapuna.

For supplying the broadband network, IBM Logical teamed up with TelstraClear – which also established the internet gateways and the security infrastructure surrounding those.

One stop shop
The selection of IBM Logical as Trustees Executors’ IT partner was critical McPhail says. “Whereas some organisations like to fragment their vendor contracts, and maybe have two or three different vendors, I didn’t think we could risk a fragmented infrastructure or a fragmented implementation.

The whole technology infrastructure these days is too tightly interwoven, you lose efficiency when you split parts off to different vendors. If you fragment it, you are potentially breaking down the whole network and it just falls to pieces.” Given these concerns, McPhail says Trustees Executors wanted a business and technical partnership with a single vendor.

The appropriateness of the IBM Logical selection became even more apparent as the project progressed. “In the early stages we became aware that IBM Logical were Microsoft resellers,” he says, “and also Compaq resellers. We’d standardised on Compaq kit, so suddenly IBM Logical became a one stop shop which was absolutely ideal for what we needed.” (For a full list of solutions provided see the sidebar)

Given the significant scope of the project and the pressing timelines, McPhail says it was clear from the outset that to meet the challenge Trustees Executors needed more than just a vendor-relationship, it had to be a team relationship with a vendor as passionate about its success as he was.

“Basically we were starting from scratch,” he says, “and I quickly realised the real value in us working with IBM Logical – the thing that made it work so well was this ‘togetherness’ thing. Sure, we signed a formal contract but then we just put that to one side and got on with it. We both knew what the goals were. We designed it together and we implemented it together. It was high pace, it was fast. We were all working 12 hour days to get it done in three months which is some sort of a record I’d say.”

Minimal interruption
Adding to the pressure of the implementation was the fact that Trustees Executors had to remain operational during the whole process. Again, says McPhail, IBM Logical went above and beyond the call.

“Because of the pace of change we had to be sure that we developed good relations with our internal clients – our own staff – to be sure they were on our side working with us. IBM Logical bent over backwards in that regard and as much work as possible was done outside business hours to avoid interruptions. They were extremely aware of their need to accommodate us and if we had to be in at five in the morning to do something, it was never a problem. IBM Logical was there.”

Cutting the cable
Three months and 14 days after the split from Tower, McPhail says the implementation team gathered at Trustees Executors office to pop some champagne corks and ceremoniously cut the cable that linked the company to Tower. “I brought in a pair of garden shears for the job,” he laughs. Operations have run “very smoothly” since then, he says, with IBM Logical remaining as Trustees Executors IT partner. “They’re managing the WAN network, managing our external internet security, supplying us with Microsoft licenses and supplying us with hardware as required.”

Looking back on the implementation job, McPhail describes the whole scenario as very fortuitous. “In the IT world it’s a rare experience to be given the chance to start afresh with no baggage. We’ve now got an entirely new high bandwidth network, PCs of the latest specifications and good capacity servers. We haven’t got any residual stuff like ancient printers or ancient PCs – it’s all new and the network is using the latest technology throughout.”

Looking ahead, McPhail says Trustees Executors are already exploring using surplus network capacity to implement another solution – IP telephony.

For more information
www.trustees.co.nz

IBM:
Greg Hatchwell
greg.hatchwell@nz.ibm.com

Logical was purchased by IBM on 29 March 2004

October 2004