ING Group Deploys Intel® Itanium® 2-Based Systems To Run Its Insurance Analysis Operations

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Nov. 25, 2003 - ING Mexico, a global financial institution and part of the ING Group, has deployed Intel® Itanium® 2 processor-based HP Integrity servers to better analyze customer data and develop more accurate risk selection and pricing. The company is replacing legacy RISC-based equipment and moving to an Itanium 2-based solution in order to achieve greater performance at lower cost.

ING Mexico combined Itanium 2 processor-based HP Integrity rx5670 servers with SAS* Business Intelligence and Microsoft* Windows* Server 2003 software to lower the cost and increase performance of its insurance analysis infrastructure.

"ING's strategy is to take IT best practices and implement them in some of the 60 worldwide locations where we serve over 60 million clients," said Mike Wallace, director and chief actuary of ING Mexico. "The Itanium 2-based solution we deployed in Mexico has been a great success and has influenced ING Canada to look at a similar solution. We are seriously considering moving our Canada UNIX based solution to an Itanium 2 processor-based solution running SAS and Microsoft Windows in the very near future."

"For years SAS and Intel have worked together to raise business analytics to a higher level by ensuring that SAS solutions integrate the enhanced performance and features of all Intel server platforms," said Sean Peace, Latin American general manager of alliances and business development at SAS. "Thousands of organizations, like ING Group, rely on SAS solutions to power key business decisions. Matching these solutions with Itanium-based systems gives ING Mexico the computational power, massive data processing ability and scalability to analyze insurance claims faster and with greater confidence."

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