HONG KONG, Aug. 18 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced today that global health service company, CIGNA Worldwide Life Insurance Company Limited (NYSE: CI), has implemented an IBM high availability business resiliency services solution to ensure business continuity in the event of disasters or other incidents that could cause costly business disruption and downtime.
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Delivered out of the new, world-class IBM Resilience Center in Fo Tan, the solution comprising IBM managed resiliency services and a high availability solution running on an IBM System i server helps CIGNA manage and protect its mission-critical applications. With the new solution, CIGNA has shortened its Recovery Time Objective (RTO) significantly by over 70 times.
"As a company dedicated to caring for people's health and well-being, we aim to provide our customers with peace of mind. Ensuring business continuity through our regional IT hub in Hong Kong is key to our ability to meet that aim across eight markets in Asia Pacific," said Hans Evers, Vice President, IT and Customer Service Operation, Global LA & H, CIGNA International Corporation. "IBM provides us with a high availability back-up system that ensures that we can deliver 24x7 customer service. It also supports growth in our direct-to-consumer strategy which relies increasingly on the Internet and direct TV for communications and services that customers expect around the clock access to."
In line with CIGNA's global focus on improving its infrastructure to provide enhanced customer service, CIGNA engaged IBM to provide a high availability business resiliency solution which included sourcing of hardware, implementation, facility management and ongoing support through IBM's resiliency center and team of experts. The implementation of the solution was completed in May.
"IT plays a critical role in our ability to deliver our service to customers, but we're in the insurance business, not in IT," said Mr. Evers.
