Overview Century-National is a California-based insur-ance company serving more than 250,000 policy holders for personal property, auto, and commercial vehicles. It also provides insurance for mortgage lenders, banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions in the western U.S. Company revenues in the past year included more than $100 million in homeowner policies and $56 million in commercial auto policies.

The company used Verastream Host Integrator to give business partners easy web access to critical information on an HP e3000 host.

ChallengeWhen Lou Balicki, vice president of informa-tion systems for Century-National, attended a Gartner conference, he wasn’t expecting to encounter a solution with so many legacy inte-gration possibilities. But when he saw a demon-stration of Verastream Host Integrator, he said,

“Holy mackerel, that could solve at least a dozen different problems in my IT environment.”

One issue he faced was providing accurate, real-time information to the company’s agents and brokers—a B2B imperative. Another was service-enabling the company’s legacy invest-ments to take his SOA strategy to the next level. Balicki realized immediately that Verastream could help with both.

SolutionAs a longtime user of Reflection® terminal em-u lation products, Balicki was not surprised that Verastream Host Integrator was the right tool for the job. The engineers showed him how Verastream could work with the company’s HP and DOS applications as well as with its Microsoft and Novell servers.”

Verastream Host Integrator encapsulates leg-acy data and logic via the screen interface. It transforms host applications into SOA assets by exposing business processes as web ser-vices, XML, Java, or .NET components that can be mixed, matched, and reused. The Century-National IT team began by using this technology to design a website for external agents to pro-cess homeowners insurance. With Verastream, developers were able to extract data and functions from the company’s HP-based ap-plications as reusable services. They then used those services to build the new web site.

Century-National Insurance CompanyCentury-National boosted B2B capabilities by giving easy web access to brokers and agents with Micro Focus® Verastream® Host Integrator.

At a Glance

Industry

Financial Services

Location

United States

Challenge

Business partners needed real-time access to information residing on an HP e3000 system.

Solution

Use Verastream Host Integrator to service- enable host data and business logic, providing a customized web application for brokers and agents.

Results

+ Gained immediate validation of profiles and risk for instant policy issuance.

+ Eliminated the need to replicate data or programming.

+ Leveraged investment in the HP e3000.+ Advanced enterprise SOA strategy and implemented

rapid application development platform for ongoing projects.

Customer Success StoryVerastream Host Integrator

“The bottom line for us is that all of these capabilities make it easier for our partners to do business with us.”

LOU BALICKIVice President of Information SystemsCentury-National Insurance Company

Micro FocusUK HeadquartersUnited Kingdom+44 (0) 1635 565200

U.S. HeadquartersSeattle, Washington206 217 7100800 872 2829

Additional contact information and office locations: www.attachmate.com

Agents now access Century-National’s domain via the company’s SSL appliance and land on the user-friendly web application feeding directly into the transactional system on the HP server. The online front end lets them collect applicant information, validate property profiles, assess risk, provide quotes, and issue policies. Without paperwork. Without rekeying. Without errors.

Even policy numbers are automatically re-trieved and returned without manual proce-dures. Agents see only a simple web interface while Verastream Host Integrator performs the complex operations in concert with the HP pol-icy-administration system behind the scenes.

Verastream Host Integrator has also eliminated the need to replicate a variety of insurance data and functions. For example, any rate change would ordinarily require individual adjustments to the rating tables on the HP application, in ad-dition to other systems where that data resides, including the website.

Century-National could have rewritten the rat-ing-table modules and replicated them across the enterprise, but that would have taken too long. It would also have incurred download and upload expenses. Instead, Verastream Host Integrator has automated the process, execut-ing rate changes quickly and thoroughly, while reducing IT maintenance work. “The bottom line for us is that all of these capabilities make it easier for our partners to do business with us,” Balicki said.

Brokers aren’t the only user group that’s happy with the new web application. “The new sys-tem got huge praise from our homeowners

insurance underwriting department,” said Saro Hamamah, software development manager at Century-National. “This is a group that is very familiar with the HP e3000 for their internal processing and they really appreciated the user friendliness of the new web app.”

ResultsOnce services have been generated with Verastream Host Integrator, IT can use them as building blocks for ongoing business initiatives. Now that Century-National has web-enabled its policy administration for homeowners insurance, it is looking to do the same for other applica-tions with client/server front ends—such as its standalone fire and earthquake, personal auto, collateral protection, and mobile home policies.

“The beauty of Verastream is that it’s noninva-sive; you don’t have to modify the legacy sys-tem,” said Balicki. “In the insurance industry we can’t afford to risk the integrity of our critical legacy data.”

Balicki said there are few software vendors with such a high level of customer service: “If we can’t resolve a problem easily, Attachmate (now part of Micro Focus) is there for us right away, and that’s how business should be done.”

About Micro FocusSince 1976, Micro Focus has helped more than 20,000 customers unlock the value of their business logic by creating enabling solutions that bridge the gap from well-established tech-nologies to modern functionality. The two port-folios work to a single, clear vision—to deliver innovative products supported by exceptional customer service. www.microfocus.com

“The beauty of Verastream is that you don’t have to modify the legacy system. In the insurance industry we can’t

afford to risk the integrity of our critical legacy data.”

LOU BALICKIVice President of Information SystemsCentury-National Insurance Company

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