Elavon Teams With CA for Enterprise IT Transformation, Wins InfoWorld 100 Award

ISLANDIA, N.Y.--([ BUSINESS WIRE ])--CA (NASDAQ: CA) announced today that Elavon, a leading global credit processing solutions provider, won an InfoWorld 100 award for using CA's [ Enterprise IT Management ] (EITM) solutions to transform its enterprise IT. The InfoWorld 100 awards honor companies for IT projects that exemplify intelligent, creative uses of technology to meet business and technical objectives.

More than one million merchant locations in 30 countries rely on Elavon to process more than two billion transactions every year quickly and accurately. Elavon partnered with CA to establish a cost-effective and scalable approach to profitably deliver the highest levels of service availability and quality, achieve greater business agility, help comply with certain regulations, and support global business expansion.

To ensure that its IT systems could continue to exceed global customer service expectations, Elavon's IT department embarked on a major transformation in April 2006. Core to this transformation, which was completed earlier this year, was the adoption of [ ITIL ]® best practices and the replacement of manual processes with integrated and automated workflows based on 12-plus CA EITM solutions.

"By optimizing the availability and performance of our IT infrastructure, we will be able to provide a higher quality of customer service, safeguard the speed and security of customer transactions, develop more innovative processing solutions to meet merchant needs, and simplify the integration of acquired companies," said David Brattain, senior vice president of Systems, EITM and Production Support for Elavon. "All these factors contribute to Elavon's competitive advantage and will help the company continue to grow its global customer base and revenues."

CA's integrated solutions for [ Application Performance Management ]; [ Change, Configuration and Release Management ]; [ Data Center Automation ]; [ Dynamic & Virtual Systems Management ]; [ IT Asset Management ]; [ Service Desk Management ]; [ Service Level and Catalog Management ]; and [ Workload Automation ] provide Elavon with intelligent incident management, help keep IT job scheduling on track, improve change management controls to aid compliance, and enhance service level management. By proactively managing its core infrastructure, which consists of hundreds of servers (many of which operate as multiple virtual machines and need to be monitored the same as a physical device), more than 4,000 workstations and hundreds of networking components, Elavon's IT department is able to address problems before they affect the business and help comply with certain industry regulations, including the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standards.

The IT Challenges of Supporting a Business with Zero Downtime

During peaks in demand, Elavon processes as many as 200 transactions per second for its customers. Given the impact on customer satisfaction and revenue, downtime is simply not an option for Elavon or its customers.

To deliver high levels of availability and reliability, Elavon must be able to monitor its systems for any issues that might impede performance. CA's EITM solutions enable Elavon to proactively address IT issues before they affect merchants and their customers.

Achieving Greater Business Agility with Data Center Automation

Elavon is currently implementing new CA technology to automatically provision and schedule multi-platform environments to develop and test new, business-critical software applications on demand. The resulting increase in development efficiency will lead to higher software quality and reduced time-to-market. Having established proof-of-concept for this "resources as a service" model, Elavon plans to apply similar automation step-by-step across its global data center—ultimately to enable dynamic reallocation of virtualized assets based on load, scheduling, and other predefined criteria.

CA's EITM solutions will enable Elavon to develop and deploy business-critical application software of higher quality in less time. This will save money, improve Quality of Service (QoS) to merchant customers, and reduce the inherent business risk associated with any potential errors in Elavon's new and updated applications. Automated provisioning also will free IT administrators and other key staff to focus on higher-value activities. Elavon has moved closer to its long-range goal of radically consolidating its global data center environment. This empowers the business to further hone its competitive edge and sustain both ongoing growth and enhanced profitability.

Meeting Regulatory Compliance

Elavon's integrated CA EITM and ITIL best practices implementation support Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance by enabling the company to strictly govern and manage its assets and applications throughout their life cycle. CA's solutions help prevent inadvertent changes that could undermine Elavon's security status and risk profile.

Elavon's improved approach to problem management is important for proving regulatory compliance. It has saved the company both time and expense during audits.

Supporting Global Business Expansion

In addition to addressing its current operational challenges, Elavon wanted to develop an IT platform that would support future growth. The company is always looking to expand its customer base, both in terms of geography and vertical sectors.

Acquisitions, which are a key component of Elavon's growth strategy, confront the IT organization with an integration challenge. Not only have CA's EITM solutions enabled Elavon to maximize its investment in existing technology, in particular virtualization, they have also greatly streamlined the integration of new companies' IT assets into Elavon's infrastructure.

"By embracing CA's EITM vision, Elavon is able to ensure the availability and performance of critical IT services, automate IT functions and processes, make IT responsive to business needs, help meet regulatory requirements, and reduce costs," said Ajei Gopal, executive vice president of CA's Enterprise IT Management Group. "CA's automated, integrated solutions have helped Elavon make IT a competitive advantage."

About Elavon

Elavon's Global Acquiring Solutions organization is a part of U.S. Bancorp (NYSE: USB). Elavon provides end-to-end payment processing services to more than one million merchants in the United States, Europe, Canada and Puerto Rico. Solutions include credit and debit card processing, electronic check services, gift cards, dynamic currency conversion, multi-currency support, and cross-border acquiring. Elavon's services are marketed through multiple alliance partner channels including financial institutions, trade associations and ISOs. Elavon has solutions to meet the needs of merchants in specialized markets including small business, retail, hospitality/T&E, health care, education and the public sector. Elavon represents the former brands of NOVA Information Systems and its affiliates FHMS and euroConex. For more information visit [ www.elavon.com ].

Elavon Financial Services Limited is regulated by the Financial Regulator

About CA

CA (NASDAQ: CA) is the world's leading independent IT management software company. With CA's Enterprise IT Management (EITM) vision and expertise, organizations can more effectively govern, manage and secure IT to optimize business performance and sustain competitive advantage. For more information, visit [ www.ca.com ].

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Elavon Teams With CA for Enterprise IT Transformation, Wins InfoWorld 100 Award