GDIS AND BOI

Carrying on the success.

Generali Deutschland Informatik Services GmbH (GDIS) – the IT full-service provider of the Generali Group – puts great value on the efficient and controlled use of master data and control data in all business processes.For decades, GDIS has relied on the mainframe. For more than 25 years TABEX4, the table management system from BOI Software GmbH, has provided revision-proof, high- performance productive master data and control data.

In order to make this data also available for Java applications in the decentralized world, a uniform and company-wide table infrastructure for Java was implemented with TABEX4 JTC – a highly efficient
connection between mainframe and decentralized Java applications.

In GDIS application programming, the productive control data and master data are now available both on the mainframe and in Java for the world‘s fastest read access: Access speed with TABEX4 JTC is up to 550
times faster compared to access on RDBs. This allows GDIS to implement its business applications either on the mainframe or via Java in the decentralized world and modernize them step by step as required. Complete control of all business-critical data and processes is always maintained.

Customer profile & key numbers 2017

• GDIS is the IT full-service provider of Generali Germany, the second largest primary insurance group on the German market.
• Employees: 760 (2018)
• Turnover: EUR 340 million (2017)
• GDIS provides a network for 40,000 people daily.
• At the locations in Aachen and Hamburg, GDIS provides the IT service for all Generali Group companies.
• GDIS is one of the leading developers of information systems in Germany. GDIS’ core competencies are: stable and cost-effective operation of multi-platform infrastructure and development of high-performance, sustainable IT applications.

„The change was accompanied and supported very professionally by BOI. The first applications are running productively and show us that we are on the right track. The long-standing, good cooperation with BOI has proven itself again.“

With the implementation of TABEX4 JTC, GDIS now provides the productive master data and control data for the world’s fastest Java table access. The productive introduction of TABEX4 JTC fulfilled all requirements of GDIS.

However, the potential of TABEX4 JTC has not yet been exhausted at GDIS. As a next step, GDIS will migrate the existing computing core of the life insurance business from COBOL to Java. A proof of concept was
carried out in collaboration with BOI: a TABEX4 JTC adapter had been the ideal solution. It implements the TABEX4 APIs for the automatic compilation of the existing COBOL source code to Java and subsequently
allows the migration of the entire mainframe application to Java. BOI developed this adapter for GDIS - and thus enables the realization of a large saving potential for the company.

TABEX4 JTC Publisher generates customized, consistent JTC Snapshots of the master data and control data. Data can come from practically any conceivable data source or a combination of different data sources.

An enterprise caching solution serves as a replication system.

For Java business applications, the JTC Client offers revisionproof, ultra-fast and thread-safe in-memory access to the replicated JTC Snapshots.

Together, the three components of the JTC system enable data access that is scalable, convenient, ultra- fast, secure and characterized by low latency. The deployment of TABEX4 JTC ensures full control over all aspects of data management.

TABEX4 JTC – the world´s fastest table access

With TABEX4 JTC, GDIS uses the Java interface for the world‘s fastest table access to master data and control data. Data that is hosted and maintained on the mainframe can thus be used in all application programs throughout the company.

Werner Kopsch and Dietrich Busso, project lead of Proof of Concept for the software porting of the computing core „life insurance“ from COBOL to Java, confirm:
„During the proof of concept and the preparation of the preliminary study the cooperation with BOI was very successful. The supply by BOI took place promptly and requirements were met flexibly. In our software
porting project we benefit from the fact that the TABEX Tables are available through JTC in a decentralized environment and in particular that a cloud solution can be used“.