Legacy applications deployment specialist, Micro Focus, claims to have saved HBA Health Insurance $2 million a year by migrating its business applications from an expensive mainframe system to a lower-cost Unix platform.

By migrating its legacy assets, HBA aims to take advantage of a modernised Web services infrastructure to improve customer service levels and reduce IT costs.
 
HBA is one of Australia’s major health insurers, with more than 1 million members, and part of worldwide health and care company, BUPA, which acquired HBA in 2003. After the acquisition, BUPA separated all key systems from HBA's previous owner AXA to establish its own computer functions and IT services in Melbourne. The final transfer was the migration of BOSS – the core administration and service system of the business – from a mainframe located in New York to a Unix Sun Solaris system in Australia.
 
“Many options were considered, including creating a like-for-like system in Australia, or using the BUPA parent system as a base for the new system,” said Peter Powell, CIO, HBA Australia. “However, none of these options really matched our requirements or fitted into the time available.
 
“The savings we’re making by migrating our applications to Unix are being re-invested to improve services to our members,” said Powell. “It also gives us a modern platform and the means to establish further Web services down the track.”
 
The software and hardware migration to Micro Focus COBOL, Oracle and Unix was completed in 14 months and went live in January 2005. Powell estimates an ROI (Return on Investment) of just under three years for the migration which saw the conversion of 5000 programs, six million lines of code, four programming languages and tens of thousands of files.

Keith Mante, Country Manager, Micro Focus Australia, said HBA has found the new Unix-based system as reliable as the old mainframe platform.
 
“Customers often express concern over reliability before they go through the migration process, but projects such as HBA’s prove these fears are groundless,” Mante said. “Not only are reliability levels maintained, but productivity levels are often improved following such migrations - freeing developers to take on more innovative projects.”
 
The second phase of the HBA project – which takes advantage of the migrated application and its integration with new technologies such as .NET, J2EE and Web services – is now underway with a new Enterprise Architecture in place.