Smals Gets Big Savings from Webmethods Entirex
Customer Company Size
Large Corporate
Region
- Europe
Country
- Belgium
Product
- webMethods EntireX
- Adabas
- Natural
Tech Stack
- COBOL
- Java
- Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Cost Savings
- Productivity Improvements
Technology Category
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - API Integration & Management
Applicable Industries
- Healthcare & Hospitals
Applicable Functions
- Discrete Manufacturing
- Business Operation
Use Cases
- Process Control & Optimization
- Predictive Maintenance
Services
- System Integration
- Software Design & Engineering Services
About The Customer
With more than 1,700 employees and annual revenue of €193 million, Smals is one the largest ICT shared services organizations in Belgium. Smals was started in 1939. Today, it operates three state-of-the-art data centers and a variety of mission critical platforms, including over 1,700 servers and over 300 business applications. As a not- for-profit organization, Smals works for more than 60 Belgian government organizations in social security and healthcare. In addition to hosting, housing and outsourcing, Smals has a strong focus on development, mainly on the Java platform. They also provide more and more support and assistance to their members to let them run business applications cost effectively.
The Challenge
Smals, a leading Information and Communications Technology (ICT) services organization in Belgium, had invested years of development in 42 specialized COBOL applications. Once Smals had created a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), the organization needed an efficient way to establish communications between the SOA and these core mainframe applications. Effective communication between the systems of the CBSS and Smals is crucial for a swift processing of millions of transactions. “When one of our members wants to process a declaration—for example for registering a new employee in their system—they send an electronic message to the CBSS that uses an IBM mainframe,” Vanneste said. “Formerly, this message was passed through to Smals’ BS2000 mainframe, where the request was processed by one of the 42 specialized COBOL applications and answered.
The Solution
webMethods EntireX proved to be the perfect solution. Smals had already used Adabas and Natural for many years—and was impressed Software AG was able to create a proof of concept for webMethods EntireX in just two weeks. Vanneste turned to Software AG that proposed using webMethods EntireX. Smals was already familiar with the Software AG portfolio as the company had used Adabas and Natural for a long time. “At first, we were sceptical about EntireX,” Vanneste said. “We doubted it could do the job. But we were seriously amazed when Software AG created a proof of concept within two weeks which proved that EntireX was the perfect solution. We instantly decided to follow this route and started implementing the solution. A test environment was developed and we performed many tests.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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