CASE STUDY

Industry � Finance & Insurance

Solution � Data Management for

Business Intelligence and Reporting with Talend Enterprise Data Quality

Key Facts � Basis for policy snapshot

� Faster and more flexible reporting

� Migration from mainframe to Oracle

� Easier Error Handling

The Talend technology is flexible and easy to use. This has helped us a great deal with this migration project. Our Talend-based data management platform has built a bridge between the old mainframe landscape and a modern IT architecture.

Marko Mahler, Application developer in the IT quality assurance and standards department at MÜNCHENER VEREIN

Building a bridge to a modern data architecture for faster, more flexible reporting

Talend Enterprise Data Quality at MÜNCHENER VEREIN

The MÜNCHENER VEREIN mutual insurance company was founded in 1922 to secure favorable

insurance coverage for the skilled trade and craft sectors in Germany. MÜNCHENER VEREIN manages

approximately 650,000 premiums, offering tailored insurance solutions to customers of all ages.

Strategic target groups include skilled tradespeople and craftspeople, those over fifty years of age,

public servants and members of associations as well as individuals covered by Germany’s state-run

health insurance program. Today, the medium-sized insurer employs 750 back office and 350 field

staff. It also collaborates with 5,000 brokers. In 2013, the organization collected premium income in the

amount of EUR 679 million. Capital investments totaled around EUR 5.6 billion.

The challenge

Today, insurance is a data-driven business. To make sound decisions, calculate risk and evaluate

promotional measures implemented to date, providers need real-time access to precise data about

their insurance portfolios.

MÜNCHENER VEREIN’s statistics solution had evolved over decades and was based on a SESAM

database running on a Fujitsu BS/2000 mainframe with an OSD operating system. The database

contains all insured data and an overview of all policy agreements. To generate statistics, the company

deployed an in-house solution that used COBOL programs to transfer data from the SESAM database to

a statistics system known as GSS (General Statistic System). At a technical level, the COBOL programs

generated readable interface files which were then loaded to the GSS database, also located on the

mainframe, using GSS utility programs. The data was then read out by other GSS programs and made

available as text files. These files were then distributed to client/server systems via file transfer where

they could be processed further with other programs such as Excel. This was the only way of generating

reports with accompanying diagrams for use across the company.

“It was a complicated and inflexible process, further compounded by the fact that we couldn’t use new

technologies to access GSS data on the host,” recalls Marko Mahler, application developer in the IT

quality assurance and standards department. “We wanted faster, more flexible reporting capabilities

to enable our IT customers to respond more rapidly and effectively. To accomplish that, we decided to

port our statistics database to a relational Oracle system that we could use to select individual tables

with SQL.”

Once the company started moving its statistics solution to Oracle, it

decided to expand the project and migrate its policy snapshot to a web

application. The policy snapshot is used by MÜNCHENER VEREIN field

staff to view and manage their contract portfolios. Support had expired

for the software that the company had been using, and it did not run on

computers with Microsoft Windows 8. Additionally, the company wanted

to migrate the underlying database from SESAM to Oracle. “The problem

here was that the database for the policy snapshot was bigger than the

statistics database. This meant we couldn’t build on the results of the

first project for this sub-project,” explains Marko Mahler. “In hindsight,

it would have been better to migrate the policy snapshot first. As it

was, we had to migrate a lot of data from the central database to two

databases and ensure that the data was consistent.”

The Talend solution

Marko Mahler and his development team needed a tool for the statistics

project that would deliver data in different formats to SAP Business

Objects to create business intelligence reports. They were looking for

a tool that could initially source data from the SESAM database on

the mainframe but was also capable of pulling data from the Oracle

database further down the line. “We looked at a number of different

solutions. However, Talend was the only software that fit the bill,”

adds Marko Mahler. “Fujitsu-Siemens only offers JDBC interfaces for

its mainframes and Talend was the only data integration solution that

came with a built-in JDBC connector”.

MÜNCHENER VEREIN chose Talend Enterprise Data Quality. In the first

step of the project, the development team focused on extracting data

from Oracle for the statistics solution, although the SESAM database

was still the main data source. With Talend, ETL jobs can be created

efficiently - defined components can be easily connected using Talend’s

graphical user interface (GUI). If an ETL job has to be changed at a

later date, for example when the company starts sourcing data from

the Oracle database, the team only has to replace the corresponding

component. The software then generates Java code from the graphical

jobs. Every ETL job corresponds to a Java program. This was a major

advantage for the 13-strong IT team as it already has a wealth of

experience working with Java.

Benefits

Thanks to Talend software, field staff can now log on to the insurance

company’s website to easily manage their customer details, rapidly

access information and identify new business opportunities. The

company also plans to provide independent brokers with access to the

system. At the same time, the underlying database will also be used

as a platform for new applications such as a company-wide customer

relationship management (CRM) solution. MÜNCHENER VEREIN can now

gradually migrate its IT infrastructure from a decades-old mainframe

platform to a modern client/server infrastructure, and reports can be

created faster to provide more up-to-date, accurate insights.

Additionally, the company has been able to identify and correct

numerous programming errors in the old database. Before, the

mainframe’s BeanConnect interface only created 80-character error

messages. Now, Talend provides meaningful information when errors

occur during a job. This enables developers to search for the cause of

an error in the corresponding Java code for every job and immediately

eliminate it. The software also comes with a debug mode for errors

that are not as easy to identify. The IT team can define points at which

the program should stop and make any necessary changes directly to

the code. External management solutions can also be used as Talend

creates every ETL job as an individual Java program. “The Talend

technology is flexible and easy to use. This has helped us a great deal

with this migration project. Our Talend-based data management

platform has built a bridge between the old mainframe landscape and a

modern IT architecture,” concludes Marko Mahler.

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