Liberty First was founded in 2006 on the principles of providing the highest levels of service and most competitive product offerings to the community of Walton County, Georgia. In the last six years, the bank has evolved beyond its original technology investment and needed a solution that would be flexible enough to grow the bank as its customer base expands. Liberty First made the decision, with support from their longstanding technology vendor, Safe Systems, to transition from aging hardware, renewal fees and maintenance costs to a scalable, virtual IT network, replacing all servers in the institution. Safe Systems designed, managed and implemented the virtualization project from beginning to end.

"We didn't want to baby our IT," said Vicki Hubbard, AVP of operations. "Liberty First had grown into and out of our original hardware and needed a solution that would allow us to be flexible and well-positioned for future growth. Safe Systems provides us with a secure, flexible, and compliant infrastructure that runs effortlessly behind the scenes with 99.9 percent uptime. We have a team of experts available for support, where previously there was no internal staff wholly dedicated to IT."

The virtual IT network consolidates multiple operating system environments onto a single server. This simplifies back office operations, increases response time to changing business demands and improves business continuity planning by providing high availability for mission critical servers. Combining this back office technology with the FFIEC compliant IT management toolset, NetComply, allows the bank to completely outsource day-to-day IT functions and management to a hosted environment with Safe Systems and its' SOC 2 Type II audited facilities.

"We are proud to partner with an institution such as Liberty First," said Danny Johnston, CEO for Safe Systems. "Financial institutions like Liberty First can benefit tremendously from the efficiencies gained by running an automated, virtual environment. It is our goal to provide sophisticated solutions that enable financial institutions to run a seamless, secure, and compliant back office, while still positioning competitively."