Situation
Regions Bank is one of the nation's largest financial services providers of consumer and commercial banking. Serving customers in 16 states across the South, Midwest and Texas, the bank operates approximately 1,700 banking offices and 2,000 ATMs. With millions of customers relying on branch services and 24/7 access to their accounts, downtime is not an option.
Strategy
In 2002, what was then AmSouth Bank began construction on a 16,000 sq. ft.data center in Birmingham, Alabama. The electrical engineers spearheading the UPS installation recognized the batteries were the most critical piece of equipment to maintain 24/7 uptime; therefore specified a Cellwatch battery monitoring system to further protect them from an outage. In 2006, AmSouth merged with Regions Bank and the AmSouth state-of-the-art Birmingham data center became the primary operating data center for the newly combined entity operating as Regions Bank.
Results
The Regions data center operates three shifts with16 facility engineers responsible for visually operating and maintaining all systems. Since Cellwatch constantly scans the batteries, managers compare it to having a dedicated engineer physically watching each battery 24/7. With continuous monitoring, Cellwatch enables personnel to focus on other IT and data center tasks. If a battery alarm is triggered, a notification is sent to five different pagers ensuring multiple engineers are informed immediately, allowing them to take appropriate action.
“There is no wondering if we've got a failing or open cell - we always know our battery status. We have complete confidence in our battery performance and ability to maintain uptime.”
TERRY GURGANUS
MC Facilities, Critical Power
Systems Manager - Regions Bank
