Switzerland’s Helvetia chooses Ciena for high-speed, secure DCI

Robust infrastructure to support critical data transfer between key enterprise hubs

HANOVER, Md.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 24, 2017-- Leading Swiss insurance firm Helvetia selected Ciena (NYSE: CIEN) for a data center interconnect (DCI) network between its major data hubs in Switzerland. Helvetia will leverage a suite of Ciena solutions as part of this network build, including Waveserver and the 6500 Packet-Optical Platform, for high-capacity Ethernet and Fibre Channel interconnect. This deployment will also enhance the security of Helvetia’s network using Ciena’s integrated WaveLogic Encryption, ensuring data is always protected as it travels between Helvetia’s Swiss data centers.

Key Facts:

• Helvetia Switzerland (part of the Helvetia Group) is one of Switzerland’s large insurance providers, with more than 1.3 million customers nationally.
• Recent corporate acquisitions and market growth is driving Helvetia to increase its data center footprint within Switzerland and improve existing links between key business hubs. With Ciena, Helvetia is significantly increasing the scalability, reliability and capacity of its network links between the Swiss Data Center locations.
• With this simple high-capacity network, Helvetia will be able to transport data at 200 Gb/s across distances up to 130km without requiring costly Raman amplification or intermediate amplifier sites.
• This deployment also includes 200G wire-speed encryption for enhanced data transmission security, along with Ciena’s software-based MyCryptoTool, a dedicated management user portal that provides full control of all security parameters associated with protecting data traveling across the network. This allows Helvetia’s security team to manage the encryption capabilities, while the network team separately manages network operations.
• Kapsch CarrierCom, a global system integrator and supplier of end-to-end telecommunications solutions and a CienaBizConnect partner, is deploying Helvetia’s robust Ciena-based network as a fully managed service.

Executive Comments:

“As the financial services sector moves to provide more online offerings there is a growing need for highly-reliable and continuous connectivity. By bolstering our DCI networks with Ciena, Helvetia ensures we can securely deliver the applications and services needed for our employees to be successful at their jobs and our customers to have access to critical information – whenever they need it.” - Andreas Hagin, Lead Engineer, IT Infrastructure, Helvetia

“Today’s data centers don’t exist in isolation but rather need to share data and content with each other and provide back-up and redundancy. Helvetia sees these challenges as opportunity, and by using Ciena’s solutions for its in-house data needs the company is well-placed to be a leader in the digitization of the insurance market.” - Daniel Prokop, Regional Sales Director, CentralEurope,Ciena

AboutHelvetia Group

The Helvetia Group with headquarters in Switzerland has grown over the past almost 160 years to become a successful international insurance group. Alongside its home market of Switzerland, its core geographic markets also include Germany, Italy, Austria and Spain, which from the “Europe” segment. Helvetia is active in the life and non-life business in these markets. In addition to these markets, Helvetia also offers tailored specialty lines coverage and reinsurance via the “Specialty Markets” segment in France and through selected destinations worldwide. It has 6,481 employees providing services for more than 5 million customers and achieved a business volume of more than CHF 8.5 billion for the 2016 financial year. Helvetia attaches great importance to practical geographic diversification and a good balance between the profitable non-line business, the growing life and pensions business and the promising international specialty lines business. The registered shares of Helvetia Holding AG are traded on the SIX Swiss Exchange.