Moscow, March 29, 2005. DATA FORT, the IBS project providing corporate IT Outsourcing services has completed redesign and transfer of the Alfa Group Consortium website to Microsoft platform. A year earlier Alfa Group began using the dedicated Unix-servers at the DATA FORT database as a host for alfagroup.ru and alfagroup.org internet-resources.

Alfa Group is one of the largest industrial and financial consortiums in Russia with business interests spread in the fields of crude oil and natural gas production, commercial and investment banking, insurance, retail trade, telecommunications and high technology.

The Alfa Group website was installed at the dedicated Unix-servers of the DATA FORT project database in February, 2004. By the end of 2004, at the customer’s request, the project experts have completed alterations of the software along with redesign of the website. AIC Media Solutions (AMS) acted as the webmaster. The latest Microsoft technologies, as well as DATA FORT original new layouts in content publishing were used. Platform replacement entailed introduction of certain changes in the configuration of the servers.

According to Maria Klepilina, corporate affairs manager at CTF Holding which carries out the Consortium’s corporate centre functions, «it takes a great volume of work, and to handle it by means of the internal resources only is economically inappropriate».

Thus, DATA FORT content publishing original system and division of experts labour in different fields due to outsourcing services helped facilitate the Alfa Group website administration process, having ultimately reduced the aggregate cost of ownership.

At present, DATA FORT provides a complete package of services for the Consortium’s Internet system maintenance, i.e. the servers’ continuous operation procurement, maximum possible availability of the website, 24-hour monitoring, technical support, software and database backup, alteration of the website’s structure, design and contents.

The website’s forwarding to integrated support is not the first case of Alfa Group resorting to IBS and DATA FORT outsourcing services. In November, 2004 AlfaStrakhovanie Insurance Group, member of the Consortium, outsourced the purchasing and management of the Microsoft software licenses corporate block at IBS. Both companies believe that their close cooperation will have a positive impact on business development in either company.