First Financial Federal Credit Union (First Financial) is a credit union serving Monmouth and Ocean Counties, providing traditional banking services as well as financial education, loans, free seminars, and more to the local community. One of the earliest credit unions in the country, First Financial was founded in 1936 to serve teachers in Monmouth County NJ.
First Financial Federal Credit Union (First Financial) is a credit union serving Monmouth and Ocean Counties, providing traditional banking services as well as financial education, loans, free seminars, and more to the local community. One of the earliest credit unions in the country, First Financial was founded in 1936 to serve teachers in Monmouth County NJ. Over the years, it expanded its membership to include all members of the local Boards of Education, municipal employees, and some hospitals and nursing facilities. In 2003, First Financial was officially designated as a “Community Credit Union,” serving anyone who lived or worked in Monmouth and Ocean counties.
In late 2019 and early 2020, as membership continued to increase, the organization began to experience the limitations of their existing software-defined hyperconverged solution. Not only did it lack the ability to scale to meet growing membership demands, there were significant challenges in adopting new business applications and launch new financial products to meet the competitive nature of the consumer financial services market. In addition, their disaster recovery process was complex and lead to longer than desired recovery times.
OPPORTUNITY OVERVIEW
CLIENT:
Federal credit union serving the New Jersey counties of Monmouth and Ocean.
TECHNICAL CHALLENGES:
Aging infrastructure was impeding growth, hampering customer service standards and not meeting critical Disaster Recovery requirements
SOLUTION:
- Migrated to HPE SimpliVity hyperconverged infrastructure with a two-site HA solution for production compute and storage.
- Used existing Veeam data protection software to manage archival storage on HPE StoreOnce
First Financial Federal Credit Union
Putting people first since 1936.
TAPPING A TRUSTED RESOURCE FOR A FRESH PERSPECTIVE
First Financial management knew they needed a solution that was scalable, easier to manage, and easier to recover in the event of a disaster. Among the several solution providers they reached out to – in addition to their incumbent IT partner – was CPP Associates. Having successfully built First Financial’s internal network infrastructure with an HPE Aruba solution, CPP had established a high degree of trust and credibility with the management team. That project had also presented a complex technical/business issue, which the CPP team was able to solve with a network solution that was easy to manage and met performance and management goals. First Financial management presented the opportunity for CPP to demonstrate the same degree of ingenuity and expertise for this new challenge.
PRESENTING EXPONENTIAL VALUE FOR TODAY AND TOMORROW
The incumbent partner’s recommendation consisted of a next generation upgrade of the same solution at an increased cost, which offered no net change in operations, no net business benefit, and no net technical benefit. First Financial management quickly realized that they would end up in the same position in two to three years, which would require another major forklift migration.
CPP architected an end-to-end infrastructure solution — built on HPE SimpliVity — that would meet their performance, scale, management, backup, and disaster recovery needs both in the present and for five years in the future. The solution included a two-site high availability (HA) framework for production compute and storage, using existing Veeam data protection software to manage archival storage on HPE StoreOnce.
CPP’s knowledge of First Financial’s environment, expertise in the hyperconverged competitive landscape, ability to articulate how the solution would meet their business needs, and top-to-bottom dedication to excellence and customer service persuaded First Financial to award the business to the CPP/HPE partnership.
CPP ordered, installed, and implemented the replacement solution for First Financial. The implementation went smoothly and was completed ahead of schedule.
CPP’s Project Management capabilities kept the combined First Financial-CPP teams on task and in time, helped ensure a smooth delivery of hardware, software, services, and kept the customer continually updated with project status, updates, and changes.
IN THE CLIENT’S WORDS
“The new system is indeed meeting our needs and our expectations … On the very first day that we went live with it, we immediately began to build enhancements to our infrastructure that had been delayed.
“…You have a fantastic team, and with each member of the team, it was obvious that they cared deeply about the quality of the solution they delivered to our firm. Everyone was a pleasure to work with…
This project was complex and involved many parts, from hardware and software, to installation labor. Despite the potential for many things to go awry, your team – from pre-sales to project management to Implementation – made it look easy…”
Michael Walker | IT Director
First Financial Federal Credit Union
