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Plan, track, orchestrate, and release applications
Govern quality and implement auditable processes
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Modernize mainframe applications for the Cloud
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Monitor and optimize complex networks
Discover, manage, and map configurations & assets
Accelerate provisioning with governance in place
Automate and orchestrate processes end to end
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Automate server provisioning, patching, and compliance
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ValueEdge: Value Stream Management
Align corporate investments with business strategy
Continuous quality from requirements to delivery
Scale enterprise SCCM with security and compliance
Resilient AI-powered functional test automation
Enterprise-level requirements management
Deliver continuous application performance testing
Plan, track, orchestrate, and release applications
Govern quality and implement auditable processes
Automate deployments for continuous delivery
Access all products in application delivery management
Modernize Core Business Systems to Drive Business Transformation
Build business applications using new tools & platforms
The leading solution for COBOL application modernization
Modernize mainframe applications for the Cloud
Modernize host application access
Discover the future of CORBA
Modern mainframe application delivery for IBM Z
Secure, zero-footprint access to host applications
Access host data and automate processes with RPA
Multi-factor Authentication for IBM z/OS endpoints
Access all products in Application Modernization & Connectivity
Security at the core to everything you do; Operations, Applications, Identity and Data
Build secure software fast
Augment human intelligence
Discover, analyze, and protect sensitive data
Drive IT ecosystem with identity-centric expertise
Deliver simplified, secure access to users
Scale to billions of identities with IGA platform
Gain control of privileged user activities
Track changes and activities in managed services
Get fast, accurate detection of threats
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Trusted, proven legal, compliance and privacy solutions
Analytics for text, audio, video, and image data
Reduce risk, cost, and maintenance, and T2M
AI and machine learning for data analysis
Enterprise backup/disaster recovery
Unified traditional and mobile device management
Meet regulatory & privacy retention requirements
Email, IM, and chat-based collaboration
Mobile workforce communication & collaboration
Secure critical file storage and print services
Access all products in Information Management and Governance
Simplify Your IT Transformation
Manage IT & non-IT services with automation and AI
Discover, monitor, and remediate with AIOps
Monitor and optimize complex networks
Discover, manage, and map configurations & assets
Accelerate provisioning with governance in place
Automate and orchestrate processes end to end
Manage IT & software assets for better compliance
Automate server provisioning, patching, and compliance
Automate screen-based human actions with robots
Access all products in IT Operations Management
Give your team the power to make your business perform to its fullest
To keep up with the pace of digitization, LV 1871 wanted to remove technical restrictions to improve services.
LV 1871 manages over 670,000 insurance policies and found it increasingly challenging to offer clerks and developers modern, intuitive tools quickly and cost-efficiently. Rainer Midderhoff, Head of Application Development & IT Security Officer at LV 1871, explains: “We were unable to provide lean workflows for efficient software development easily with our existing COBOL setup.”
To increase developer productivity, the company needed to optimize its tooling and IT management processes. Rainer Midderhoff says: “Without integrated workflows, improving the experience for staff was time-consuming. Technical limitations locked us into outdated solutions running out of support, posing a potential business risk that we wanted to eliminate to improve resiliency.”
Insurer Lebensversicherung von 1871 a. G. München (LV 1871) offers a range of life, disability, income protection and pension insurance policies. With an annual premium income of €610 million, the mutual insurance association employs 450 people and works with more than 9,000 partners.
LV 1871 relies on its central life insurance inventory management system to keep track of all contracts. Rainer Midderhoff elaborates: “We’ve refined the system over many years, and the COBOL business logic works extremely well. Our goal was to increase flexibility and use the data in new ways, especially with a Java environment, so we could improve internal functionalities and enrich the user experience.”
The company decided to migrate the life insurance inventory from IBM VSE running on an IBM System z mainframe to a more cost-efficient platform, and completely redesign the frontend of the application using Java.
Rainer Midderhoff comments: “Rewriting over 900 programs wasn’t an option – we needed a quick, easy and inexpensive way of leveraging the COBOL logic we’d optimized over the decades in newly-developed Java applications.”
To increase productivity, LV 1871 replaced its outdated IBM VisualAge development environment with a modern, future-proof solution: Micro Focus Visual COBOL for Eclipse Distributed Edition with Micro Focus COBOL Server. “Micro Focus has long been a market leader in this area,” says Rainer Midderhoff.
Rainer Midderhoff – HEAD OF APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT & IT SECURITY OFFICER
LV 1871
By compiling COBOL code to Java bytecode, the solution enables developers to re-use valuable business logic in a Java environment, and write features and web services in Java – without sacrificing the stability and reliability of the original COBOL code.
With Micro Focus Visual COBOL for Eclipse, LV 1871 is much better equipped to deliver new features and services.
Rainer Midderhoff comments: “Working with Visual COBOL for Eclipse, developers can extend the functionality of existing applications gradually and smoothly integrate them with new Java technology – which was difficult before.
“We gained a future-proof solution to take advantage of new Java technologies while refactoring business-critical COBOL logic. This protects our investments in COBOL code while providing all the benefits of a modern development environment. The solution allows us to leverage decades’ worth of proven COBOL logic and move to new Java-based services faster.”
Developers can use advanced features in a comprehensive Integrated Development Environment, helping them focus on business problems. They can take advantage of features such as Micro Focus SmartLinkage to reduce the effort of integrating COBOL and Java code even further, automating routine tasks to save valuable time.
Dr. Peter Baetz, Project Manager and Developer at LV 1871, adds: “Previously, colleagues would print out code to navigate large files more easily. With Micro Focus Visual COBOL for Eclipse, they benefit from all the handy tools of a modern development environment, including advanced search across many files. The integrated debugging capability helps us to work seamlessly across COBOL and Java code.”
LV 1871 has also minimized business risk with the Micro Focus solution. Rainer Midderhoff remarks: “By modernizing our application stack, we streamlined operations and can take advantage of the most current features, releases and security patches.”
He concludes:
Rainer Midderhoff – HEAD OF APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT & IT SECURITY OFFICER
LV 1871
“We can wrap COBOL code in RESTful web services. Formerly monolithic applications now expose data and functionality through interfaces – this is how we get COBOL cloud-ready. It’s just a shame that there aren’t more aspiring young developers who want to go down that road with us.”