M-team, the IT partner of the independent and neutral health insurance funds, called on LCL to house its data securely. In October, M-team and the independent health insurance funds were strategically merged: M-team is now called MLOZ IT. The company, which manages 80 terabytes of data for 370 offices in Belgium, opted for client rooms at LCL in Aalst and Diegem. Rather than being held internally, MLOZ IT's data is now stored at two external locations. By opting for this setup, MLOZ IT chose a more secure data center infrastructure that provides peace of mind.

Need for renovation: from internal to external storage

Until recently, MLOZ IT had an internal data center in Anderlecht that it managed itself. The data center contained MLOZ IT's development environment as well as its production environment. An analysis performed by the Health Insurance Fund Supervisory Authority (Controledienst voor de Ziekenfondsen - CDZ) revealed that MLOZ IT could not make do with just one data center. MLOZ IT was advised to separate the production environment and the development environment physically at two different locations.

MLOZ IT's internal data center was due for a renovation, which would have involved considerable costs. The amount required in order to update all the systems was estimated at some EUR 360,000, and this did not even include creating a Tier-3 environment. By contrast, managing all data externally is more efficient and cheaper in relative terms.


LCL as an external partner: Belgian, certified, free choice, and support

MLOZ IT held talks with a number of major players in the data center market so that it would be able to make a comparison. In this comparison, LCL came out on top. There are a number of reasons why MLOZ IT chose us.
For MLOZ IT, it is crucial their data remain in Belgium. They were won over by the offer of three Belgian data centers with large distances between them, and the speed at which data can be transferred (less than 10 milliseconds).

Our Tier-3 certification (a security standard which indicates that the systems have been deduplicated wherever possible) was another important consideration for MLOZ IT. Security is the top priority at MLOZ IT, just as it is at LCL. Another reason why MLOZ IT chose LCL is because LCL has a PUE (power usage effectiveness, a ratio showing the amount of energy consumed by the data center) of between 1.5 and 1.7. This means that we are extremely energy-efficient.

LCL is a carrier neutral data center, and so our customers have a completely free choice when it comes to the carrier. All of LCL's data centers offer an extensive range of powerful connections, which is another important factor for MLOZ IT, since the customers of the neutral and liberal health insurance funds need to have easy, 24/7 online access to their files and must be able to download all kinds of documents.

The move was thoroughly prepared over an eight-month period, while the actual data migration was completed in the space of two days. MLOZ IT is very happy with its working relationship with LCL. The data migration went smoothly, LCL dealt with everything within the agreed time frame, and it provided MLOZ IT with extensive support in preparing for the move.