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The ACCC has cleared, provisionally, the proposed deal between Optus and NBN Co under which Optus is to be paid around $800m to shut down its HFC network and transfer customers onto the NBN. read morewebMethods moves SuperPartners to web services
Stan Beer
Wednesday, 12 October 2005 10:00
Business integration software provider, webMethods Inc, has completed an implementation of a new IT infrastructure for Australian superannuation administrator, Superpartners.
Superpartners, which had been entrenched in a legacy architecture, is now able to deploy application functionality as fully-orchestrated Web services within a service-oriented architecture (SOA). The financial services firm has credited the project with helping it to win Australia's largest industry superannuation fund, the Australian Retirement Fund (ARF) with more than 600,000 members, due to Superpartners' enhanced abilities to easily integrate the fund's existing workflows and processes.
'We had been working to win the ARF contract for several years, but previously, our technology architecture had let us down,' said Gary Evans, CIO, Superpartners. 'To be competitive, we needed to demonstrate a clear strategy moving forward, underpinned by the use of world class technology. This included an integration strategy that would allow new systems to be deployed as required whilst leveraging the existing legacy system.'
Superpartners provides administrative services, such as bulk contribution processing, fund take-ons, benefit processing, insurance and claim management, member communications, and customer relationship management, for more than 390,000 employer accounts.
The adoption of the webMethods Enterprise Services Platform as a centralised SOA platform for the enterprise has also had a significant impact on Superpartners' IT operations, according to webMethods. By exposing IT assets as Web services, the firm has been able to expand its reuse of existing components, which reduces development and maintenance costs while improving performance. To date, 30 - 40% of existing interfaces and Web services have reportedly been reused across additional functions and, overall, company officials estimate that the project has allowed them to cut integration costs by about a third compared with previous approaches.
From an operational perspective, Superpartners' IT team has reportedly been able to reduce its resource commitment to day-to-day application maintenance, as developers have shifted their focus to leveraging Web services as a means for more quickly and flexibly deploying business logic to address specific requirements. A key focus of these efforts has been in the development of composite applications allowing end-users to take advantage of a number of new self-service features, including extended visibility into real-time account status. The expectation is that customers will eventually be able to manage and process 50% of their transactions themselves.
'The nature of the contract award meant that Superpartners needed to meet a very aggressive integration schedule for taking on the additional ARF accounts,' said Andy Wilkinson, senior vice president and general manager, Asia-Pacific/Japan, webMethods Inc. 'By providing them with an 'off-the-shelf' SOA platform encompassing a portfolio of pre-defined services and proven scalability, webMethods Fabric ensured that Superpartners was able to meet this challenge. Equally important, it has positioned the firm well for future wins by providing Superpartners with the streamlined ability to develop and deploy new business processes at a significantly reduced cost.'
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