Dongbu Insurance Signs 7-year Contract with IBM

South Korea's second largest non-life insurer, Dongbu, has signed a 7-year, $60 million IT infrastructure contract with IBM.

Seoul, South Korea-based Dongbu Insurance has announced that it has signed a 7-year open infrastructure offering (OIO) contract with Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM. Under the US$60 million deal, Dongbu will work with IBM to build an integrated IT infrastructure based on IBM technology.

Dongbu will leverage four IBM System z10 Enterprise Class and Business Class mainframe servers to serve as the backbone of the system, which will run on z/OS and Linux operating systems as well as IBM DB2 and WebSphere Application Server, according to a press release.

"Our mid to long-term goal is to cement our leadership position in the indemnity insurance industry and establish ourselves as a global leader," Kun-gyo Lee, Chief Information Officer, Dongbu Insurance, said in the release. "Working with IBM, we will build an advanced IT system that supports our customer-oriented sales strategies and differentiates us from our competitors."

"Dongbu's new IT infrastructure will be Korea's first reference of a mainframe system running on both z/OS and Linux operating systems which represents a future model for enterprise architecture," added Suk-young Kang, Director, Financial Services Sector, IBM Korea.