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Comtec is a leading information technology services and solutions provider for
insurance companies that process personal and commercial lines of business. Its
Total Insurance System (TIS) supports the full spectrum of general insurance
functions, including underwriting, policy and endorsement generation, claims
management, processing, collections and a comprehensive e-Commerce solution
that enables insurers to process and complete transactions over the Internet.
The TIS architecture mixes proven, reliable middle and back-end software. It
involves an IBM AS/400 running DB2 on the back-end, using COBOL-based
middleware for business logic, and a modern, .NET-based presentation layer for
the browser-based Graphical User Interface (GUI).
Business opportunity
To extend its market reach to customers that prefer the scalability and
performance of IBM WebSphere® and other enterprise Java™
EE servers, the company made the strategic decision to offer Java EE
deployments of the presentation layer of TIS. According to Forrester Research,
56 percent of server deployments in the insurance industry are on Java EE.
Decision process
Comtec estimated that an application rewrite would have taken about six months.
Because their developers are skilled in both .NET and Java, they would not need
to retrain their engineers or hire more developers. However, having a
multi-platform solution isn't a one-time deal, and management was concerned
that maintaining separate source code bases for .NET and Java EE deployments
would multiply long-term R&D costs.
Comtec chose Mainsoft, a cross-platform technology from Mainsoft,
to rehost their existing .NET code to multiple platforms.
Solution
Comtec engineers migrated 10,000 lines of C# code and 20,000 lines of VB.NET
code into Java bytecode. The fact that the migration takes place at compile
time was crucial in this decision. Having a multi-platform solution isn't a
one-time deal, and as they go forward, Comtec wisely did not want to support
multiple applications, applying new features and bug fixes to more than one set
of source code.
This was very important for Comtec CEO David Ghetler. "Because Mainsoft for
Java EE is a compile-time solution, we are able to continue to maintain a
single source code base. This lowers our TCO significantly, and allows us to
have a multi-platform solution. The costs of having multiple source code bases,
multiple R&D teams and multiple deployment types would have been
prohibitive. We would likely not have been able to cost-effectively provide a
multi-platform offering without it."
Conclusion
Comtec decided to perform the migration themselves, opting not to use Mainsoft
Professional Services. "Using Mainsoft, we were able to create a
Java EE version of it significantly faster than if we had rewritten the
application in Java." added Ghetler. "Rewriting this directly in Java EE would
have involved a lot of extra Q&A and testing cycles, as well."
The ability to reach multiple platforms and multiple systems is already bearing
fruit for Comtec. "We are in the late stages of working with an Israeli insurer
that uses IBM WebSphere technology in their data center. We would never have
gotten this far if we didn't have a Java EE-based solution, and because we were
able to come up with one relatively quickly, we can quickly respond to this
business opportunity," said Ghetler.
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