Denel`s in-house medical scheme, UMED, with over 10 000 members, has been successfully ported from a Wang to Unix environment, resulting in the reduction of response times by two thirds, as well as reduced maintenance costs.
The medical scheme administration system, developed by Verang Software for UMED, was written using Software AG`s Adabas database management system and natural 4GL application development tool, both supplied and supported locally by SPL.
As the Wang platform was neither year 2000 compliant nor supported locally, UMED considered either re-writing or re-developing the system. However, after looking at costs, it was decided the most economical solution would be to re-host the application.
Peter Angouras, business analyst of Verang Software, says the figures spoke for themselves.
"The re-write option would have cost UMED an additional R3-million, over and above the investment on re-hosting. Abraxas Technologies, who worked with us to port the system, referred UMED to existing successful sites, so that UMED could see this was not a pioneering exercise.
"The calculated return on UMED`s investment is expected to be achieved in four years," he says.
"The intention was to hand over the system on the Sun Unix platform at the end of January 1997, but we were ready by the end of December 1996, having only begun the project in October of the same year," says Angouras.
"Many benefits were gained from porting the system, involving almost 5 000 Natural modules and a database of 4.5 Gbytes, to Unix. Once the General Ledger application re-write to Natural/Adabas is completed in January 1999, the Wang will be removed, resulting in additional floor space becoming available and a reduction in the electricity bill when the air conditioning unit is switched off.
"The porting project also gave us time to `clean-up` the system," explains Angouras. "We could get rid of all those programs which systems seem to collect but which are used once and never again. We also chose to archive some of the data. "
Quality assurance of the data is vital to the successful porting of an application. In this case, extensive testing in the new environment was done, rather than run the systems in parallel. Data comparisons were also conducted using hash totals and money figures.
The medical scheme administration system already provides remote access for Denel`s divisions, allowing them to access their members` details. Currently awaiting approval is a system enhancement giving access to UMED`s suppliers of services, for example doctors, pharmacists and hospitals. This will allow them, via the Internet, to directly assess their claims on the system and will relieve UMED of much of this administration task.
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