A prime initial objective therefore was to consolidate the storage assets to simplify and improve administration and to reduce costs. An analysis revealed that the installed Symmetrix® base, already in use for Open Systems storage, provided sufficient free or reconfigurable capacity to accommodate another 60 NT servers. A Storage Area Network based on fibre channel technology allows the attached NT, Novell, and AIX servers to share the same storage device via a switched fabric with Connectrix directors as key components. The SAN implementation has also provided Dexia with enhanced protection for business critical data - SANs can be mirrored. Thus, unplanned outages can be resolved in very short time. For 2001 Dexia has the objective to integrate SAP and data warehousing applications into the SAN and to migrate further AIX applications.