Published on 02-May-2007
Validated on 03 Aug 2009
"We selected IBM WebSphere Portal 6 because it offers roles-based access and a highly integrated, rich end-user experience. WebSphere Portal also offers easy integration with Opal's existing IBM DB2 Content Manager storage system." - Alex Libis, information and data security manager, Opal Future Technologies
Customer:
Opal Future Technologies
Industry:
Financial Markets
Deployment country:
Israel
Solution:
Business-to-Business, Business-to-Consumer, Business Continuity, Business Performance Transformation, Business Process Management (BPM), Business Resiliency, Customer Relationship Management, Development & Technology Adoption, Enabling Business Flexibility, Enterprise Content Management
IBM Business Partner:
Mainsoft Corporation
Overview
Opal Future Technologies Inc. provides IT infrastructure for eight pension funds currently regulated by the Israeli government. The funds have 3 million participants and more than $20 billion in assets.
Business need:
To reduce operating costs and deliver singular quality service, the Israeli government asked Opal to consolidate the eight pension funds into a single system.
Solution:
The new system includes IBM WebSphere Portal 6, IBM DB2 Content Manager storage system and Mainsoft's Portal Edition. This system consolidates support services, such as CRM, data mining, investment management and help desk support with access to a central pension funds engine and data stored in DB2 CM.
Benefits:
The centralized system:
- Increases the accuracy and reliability ot managed data
- Gives pension fund managers a single sign-on access to a uniform set of tools and applications to administer the fund and
- Enables accountholder's employers to transfer pension fund contributions from employee paychecks to their pension accounts
Case Study
IBM Business Partner: Mainsoft Corporation
Mainsoft Corporation, a leading .NET-Java EE interoperability company, helps enable businesses to develop a complete front-end Service Oriented Architecture, with secure, roles-based access to .NET and Java services. Mainsoft is headquartered in San Jose, California.
“Mainsoft has developed a custom suite of .NET-WebSphere software integration tools that is helping IBM customers to cross the.NET-Java EE divide.”
Yaacov Cohen, president and CEO, Mainsoft Corporation
Founded in 2005, Opal Future Technologies Inc., provides IT infrastructure for eight pension funds that are currently regulated by the Israeli government. The funds have three million participants and over US $20 billion in assets.
To reduce operating costs and deliver consistent, quality service, the government tasked Opal with consolidating the eight funds’ information management systems into a single, unified system. Opal Technologies is headquartered in Herzelia, Israel.
The new system aggregates supporting services such as customer relationship management, data mining, investments management, help desk and suppliers management into a secure, roles-based environment with access to a centralized pension calculation engine and over 30 terabytes of data stored in an IBM DB2® Content Manager storage system. The new system:
• Increases the accuracy and reliability of the managed data and enforces a uniform pension calculation for all account holders
• Gives pension fund managers a single sign-on access to a uniform set of tools and applications to administer the fund
• Enables accountholders’ employers to transfer pension fund contributions from employees’ paychecks to their pension accounts and gives account holders online access to their account information
Alex Libis, information and data security manager of Opal, evaluated several commercially available portal servers to deliver the user interface. “We selected IBM WebSphere® Portal Version 6 because it offers roles-based access and a highly integrated, rich end-user experience,” said Libis. “WebSphere Portal also offers easy integration with Opal’s existing IBM DB2 CM (Content Manager) storage system.”
However, Opal faced a critical mismatch of skills and technologies, since several of its support applications are written in .NET. The company had only three in-house Java™ developers and just four months to bring the new system into production.
Libis considered rewriting the .NET applications in Java, however, the process proved too time consuming. “It took our Java developers two weeks to rewrite a sample .NET application in Java. At this rate, we’d need about 18 months to integrate the .NET applications.”
Libis, who heard about Mainsoft’s cross-compilation technologies, decided to pilot Mainsoft’s Portal Edition. The Portal Edition cross-compiles .NET code directly into JSR 168 compliant portlets that run natively on WebSphere Portal. For the proof of concept, Libis chose the largest and most logically complex .NET application. Within three days, Opal’s .NET developers integrated the application into the Portal. “Our existing .NET team quickly achieved native integration with other J2EE portlets, without sacrificing performance,” added Libis.
Satisfied with the results, Opal selected Mainsoft’s Portal Edition to deploy the remaining .NET applications on the Portal. Opal integrated six .NET applications and more than 30 Java services into the Portal and deployed the new system in four months. In the process, the team changed less than one-half of one percent of the .NET code base. The next phase will incorporate an additional nine .NET applications and open the portal for external users.
“Today, I have Java developers and .NET developers working side by side in the Portal environment. Both groups can access the same Java classes/JSF objects to deliver Java deployments. Most importantly, Mainsoft’s Portal Edition has given us the flexibility to rapidly design and implement the system without worrying about the language in which the components are written.” Libis added.
Mainsoft’s Portal Edition and IBM WebSphere Portal enabled Opal to rapidly deploy the integrated pension fund system while fully preserving its existing code and skills. The company is achieving native integration of the .NET applications into the Portal at a fraction of the time it would have taken to rewrite them, while avoiding the inherent risk involved in a rewrite.
Mainsoft, an Advanced IBM Business Partner, is helping more than 150 businesses deploy Windows applications natively on open systems, including WebSphere Portal, WebSphere Application Server and UNIX® and Linux® operating systems. “Mainsoft has developed a custom suite of .NET-WebSphere software integration tools that is helping IBM customers to cross the .NET-Java EE divide,” said Yaacov Cohen, president and CEO of Mainsoft.
Mainsoft participates in IBM PartnerWorld® Industry Networks, which offers a rich set of benefits to all IBM PartnerWorld members who want to team with IBM to build their vertical market capabilities, expand their partner network and attract customers in the markets they serve. Mainsoft is “optimized” in the banking industry, which means it has developed further specialization by optimizing its applications with IBM technologies, achieving success with their own solutions and other criteria.
Products and services used
IBM products and services that were used in this case study.
Software:
DB2 Content Manager, WebSphere Portal
DB2 Content Manager is now known as Content Manager
Footnotes and legal information
For more information
Please contact your IBM sales representative or IBM Business Partner. Or you can visit us at: ibm.com
For more information about ISV resources from IBM PartnerWorld, visit:
ibm.com/partnerworld/industrynetworks
For more information about Mainsoft, visit mainsoft.com
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