French banking group Société Générale has switched on what is claimed to be the largest intranet-based infrastructure in Europe, connecting 23,000 staff across 2000 retail branches nationwide.
The three-year project, dubbed the Modernisation de l'Architecture Informatique des Agences (MAIA) was developed by the bank in association with SchlumbergerSema.
René Querret, chief information officer for retail banking, Société Générale, comments: "In a competitive and rapidly changing marketplace, information sharing and access has become vital, and this architecture complements the integrated multichannel strategy of the retail banking market."
SchlumbergerSema mobilised a fulltime staff of 150 engineers, programmers, analysts and technicians, and managed nearly 100 technological partners over the life of the project.
Specifications included designing and installing a wide-area intranet-based production infrastructure, and linking 2500 servers across Société Générale's French network of 2000 branches with 23,000 workstations equipped with a browser-based user interface. The finished product gives bank staff single sign-on access to all software applications across the group.