Parallel Technologies, an industry-leading facilities and IT infrastructure company, announced the completion of a large-scale data center upgrade project for MoneyGram (NASDAQ: MGI), a leading money transfer and payment services company. A formal ribbon-cutting ceremony for the 6,000 square feet will be held on Jan. 26, 2016 from 10:00AM – 11:00AM at MoneyGram’s office in St. Louis Park, Minn.
Awarded in 2014, the project focused on strengthening MoneyGram’s electrical and mechanical data center infrastructure. The goal of the project was to ensure uninterrupted service to the company’s millions of customers worldwide in 357,000 locations across 200 countries and territories.
“With the sheer number of transactions that MoneyGram processes every minute, uptime of their IT infrastructure is essential to their business,” said Tim Kittila, PE, director of Data Center Practice at Parallel Technologies. “Their once state-of the-art data center was unable to support the reliability requirement demanded by the new business needs and level of growth the company anticipated in the coming years.”
The critical element for project success was implementation of the project without interruption to data processing throughout construction; all execution (IT, facilities, server, network, storage) was undertaken during five predetermined maintenance “work windows.”
“This data center is a significant milestone to modernize MoneyGram’s power infrastructure and modernizing our data center to give us a competitive edge,” said Wayne McGurk, executive vice president, chief information officer. “The whole project was strategically planned and executed with little to no impact on business operations.”
The project design was consistent with Tier III topology (concurrent maintainability) and required complete separation between the two critical electrical support systems. Significant elements of the project included:
- Coordination between high-density TI assets and high-density cooling systems;
- Migration of computer and storage equipment to higher capacity power source;
- Upgrading 27-year old legacy equipment without interruption to service; and
- Integration of all equipment into MoneyGram’s new monitoring software.
About Moneygram
MoneyGram is a global provider of innovative money transfer and payment services and is recognized worldwide as a financial connection to friends and family. Whether online, or through a mobile device, at a kiosk or in a local store, we connect consumers any way that is convenient for them. We also provide bill payment services, issue money orders and process official checks in select markets. More information about MoneyGram International, Inc. is available at moneygram.com.
About Parallel Technologies
Founded in 1983, Parallel Technologies has evolved into an industry leader in facilities and IT infrastructure. With a focus on data center and building infrastructure technology solutions, Parallel Technologies offers reliable, cohesive mission critical solutions to support current and future business objectives by aligning, integrating and unifying disparate systems to reduce risk and uncertainty and maximize investment. In 2015, 2013 and 2007, Parallel Technologies was named to Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal’s Fast 50 Growing Private Companies. The privately-held company is headquartered in Eden Prairie, Minn. and has 104 employees.