Its Symitar division announced today that $450 million Members Choice Credit Union has migrated to the Episys outsourced solution, Symitar EASE.

The Houston-based credit union is outsourcing the operation, management, and security of its core system as well as the hosting of all third-party applications. Symitar will host and manage Episys while the Gladiator enterprise security and network services team from ProfitStars, another division of Jack Henry & Associates, will design, implement, host, and manage the network supporting the credit union's enterprise-wide technology platform. Gladiator will also implement a fully redundant network domain environment in a secondary facility.

According to Steve Gilman, president and CEO of Members Choice Credit Union, "We have seen rapid growth in a challenging environment; outsourcing is our best option to maintain that momentum and remain profitable. I see outsourcing core, security, and network functions as a smart step in preparing for inevitable changes to our banking environment. We want to focus on optimizing available applications within the core, instead of maintaining IT commodities."

Mike Gleespen, COO of Members Choice, was a catalyst in the new IT endeavors. With the full enterprise in mind, he set a goal to remove the credit union's operating inconsistencies and simplify the IT infrastructure without sacrificing its previous investments.

Members Choice was already leveraging Gladiator Enterprise Security Monitoring (ESM) which provides security monitoring and reporting for Episys, and decided to add several other Gladiator services to improve its security and compliance posture including:

• Gladiator Advanced Malware Protection, a cloud-based anti-malware solution and a secure Domain Name System (DNS) service;
• Gladiator CoreDEFENSE Managed Security Services, for complete management, correlation, and monitoring of multiple security layers in the credit union's main Houston facility as well as its two co-location sites;
• Gladiator eCommercial Security Awareness Training (eCommercial SAT), a new Web-based training program to educate commercial customers on best practices for secure financial transactions and compliance with FFIEC supplemental guidance;
• Gladiator Enterprise Network Design, Implementation, and Support Services for local and wide area network services;
• Gladiator eShield for email filtering and encryption for both inbound and outbound communications; and Gladiator Managed IT Services for the monitoring and management of mission critical IT infrastructure.

Ted Bilke, president of Symitar, said, "This is the first time one of our credit union clients will outsource core and complementary products, hosting, and managing a co-location type offering. The support of ProfitStars' Gladiator team was critical to us providing Members Choice with a truly comprehensive solution across Jack Henry & Associates, simplifying its management of vendors and disparate products and services. Credit unions are on an ongoing search for cost effective solutions that also encourage innovation and turnkey outsourcing supports both of those goals."