Mainsource Financial’s Scalable Solution

CenturyLink Solutions Featuring:CenturyLink Private PortCase Study: Mainsource Financial Group, Inc.

Customer:MainSource Financial Group, Inc. Mainsource Financial Group, Inc.(NASDAQ: MSFG)www.MainSourcefinancial.com MainSource Financial Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: MSFG) is a financialBusiness Challenge: holding company based in Greensburg, Indiana. For 2008, the companyThe pending expiration of a frame relay had assets of $2.9 billion. The firm’s 915 employees provide a wideservice contract motivated managers to range of financial services through three banking subsidiaries, andseek out a new solution. The plannedaddition of 10 branch offices mandated operate out of 85 banking offices across Indiana, Illinois and Ohio.a more scalable solution while a goal ofimplementing a cost-saving VoIP phone From time to time the company has acquired financial institutions andsystem suggested migrating to an MPLSnetwork. financial services companies to increase its reach in the region. Once aboard, new offices are brought onto the firm’s communications andSolution: applications network.Managers deployed the CenturyLinkPrivate Port service at 70 officesthroughout Indiana, Ohio and Illinois. Theyalso transitioned to Cisco 2000 SeriesRouters and 3700 Series MultiserviceAccess Routers at these locations. TheCenturyLink solution replaced a hub-and-spoke architecture with a meshed, any-to-any topology.Benefits and Results:• MPLS solution saved 20 percent over the previous frame relay network• Disaster recovery (DR) switchover can now be done in minutes versus 3-8 hours• Able to easily locate and hire IP/Cisco FACING THE CHALLENGES technicians to support MPLS/Cisco A number of factors motivated managers to seek out a new backbone solutions network to support their firms’ operations. “Our frame relay contract oo Liberated 6-18 frame relay administration hours per month for was coming up for review,” said Brian Coy, chief information officer CIO for MainSource. “It worked fine but we needed a solution that would• Meshed network eliminated single point allow us to more easily add the ten new branches we were planning to of failure existent in hub-and-spoke turn up.” frame relay architecture• Meshed network more efficiently utilizes Coy also wanted to reduce costs and increase operational efficiencies bandwidth than legacy solution through the deployment of a voice over IP (VoIP) phone system. “We were looking forward to the more unified communications VoIP would provide to our employees,” said Coy. The company’s communications architecture presented further challenges. The existing frame relay network used a hub-and- spoke topology which incorporated a single point of failure at the headquarters location. Moreover, bandwidth utilization was inefficient, requiring traffic from one office to travel to the hub then on to another office. “That used up more of our bandwidth without adding anything of value to users,” said Coy. *These results are unique to this entity and should not be considered an indication of the amount of savings or improvements, if any, that may be realized by any other entity subscribing to comparable services.

“The Qwest MPLS service established a secure, private VPN for our banking office data traffic at an affordable price. It’s easier to manage, scales easily and significantly increases the speed with which we can fail over to our disaster recovery site. ” —Brian Coy, Chief Information Officer, MainSource Financial Group, Inc.PROVIDING A SUCCESSFUL SOLUTION IMPROVED PERFORMANCEMainSource IT staffers worked with CenturyLink In the past, it would take Coy three to eight hours totechnicians to implement the CenturyLink Private redirect frame relay nodes to the firm’s disaster recoveryPort service at 70 offices in Indiana, Ohio and Illinois. site. Today, “With the MPLS solution, we can switch itThe service connects the company’s locations using over in a matter of minutes. All we have to do is pointIP/MPLS-based technology to provide any-to-any our DNS servers to the new IP address and it’s up andconnectivity. Additionally, managers installed the functioning.”CenturyLink Toll Free service for the convenience of their Another performance enhancement lies in the greatercustomers. redundancy of the MPLS network. “The meshedCompany managers also opted to replace Motorola network eliminated the single point of failure that used torouters with Cisco gear. They hired a CenturyLink exist with our frame relay hub-and-spoke architecture,”business partner to configure and install Cisco 2000 said Coy. “Now if our headquarters node goes down,Series Routers and Cisco 3700 Series Multiservice the other branches can still communicate with eachAccess Router at office locations. other.”“The router installation went well,” said Coy. “The tech Still another advantage of a meshed network was thewould go out to the office, replace the old router with efficiency boost Coy experienced in his bandwidththe Cisco router, make sure that the line was up and utilization. “If Branch A wanted to print a document atrunning fine, then switch the branch over to the new Branch B, the data used to have to come to the hub thenrouter. Really there was no downtime except for maybe be routed back out. Today, traffic goes directly to itsa two- or three-minute changeover.” destination, without siphoning off bandwidth from other parts of the network.”DELIVERING RESULTSCoy successfully replaced a frame relay network with SCALABILITY AND SERVICEa more flexible CenturyLink MPLS system. It provides As new branch offices are added, Coy can readily deploybank branches and offices with a reliable and secure IP the MPLS service and Cisco routers to incorporate themVPN to safeguard customer data. And the CenturyLink into the MainSource network.Private Port service delivers these benefits at a cost- (continued on back cover)effective price.“The Qwest service gave us about 20 percent savingscompared to the frame relay solution that it replaced,”said Coy. *These results are unique to this entity and should not be considered an indication of the amount of savings or improvements, if any, that may be realized by any other entity subscribing to comparable services.

CR090968 08/09 (continued from inside page) From an operational perspective, making the switch to an MPLS network using Cisco routers has paid off. “It’s a lot easier to find and hire techs who can manage an IP network and equipment,” said Coy. “Now I can delegate that task to someone else instead of spending hours every month administering our old frame relay network and routers.” Looking to the future, the CenturyLink Private Port service positions Coy to implement VoIP. The service gives him a global IP backbone that incorporates full-bodied quality of service capabilities so that VoIP traffic can be prioritized. 1801 California Street Denver, CO 80202 1 800-860-1020 www.centurylink.com/business ©2011 CenturyLink, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Not to be distributed or reproduced by anyone other than CenturyLink entities.

Mainsource Financial’s Scalable Solution

by CenturyLink Business on Jul 03, 2012

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Mainsource Financial’s Scalable Solution Document Transcript