Leading credit insurance company Credit Guarantee Insurance Corporation of Africa (CGIC), has used JMR Software BITSHIFT data migration service in an innovative way to provide much-needed access to a Natural/Adabas data source. The solution enables over 560 million records to be migrated, if needed, on a daily basis to a SQL data source enabling actuaries to interrogate and use the data.
Like many well-established financial services organisations, CGIC was discovering new challenges with its legacy system. A key challenge was making data from a Natural/Adabas database accessible to its actuarial department on a regular basis. And, the time, skills, tools and resource required was putting additional demands on the IT department. Not wanting to replace their legacy system, CGIC went to data migration experts JMR Software to help create a solution.
JMR Software used BITSHIFT, their bespoke data migration service. Instead of a one and done data migration hit, BITSHIFT now sits on the servers at CGIC and every week is used to migrate anything from thousands to millions of individual records of data from the natural Adabas database to one single, easier to use, SQL database.
Initially JMR Software carried out a proof of concept using CGIC's most complicated file and involving over 10 million records that was completed successfully in less than a month. The automated nature of BITSHIFT meant that these records ran through the extract, transform and load (ETL) process, including reconciliation to an individual field level, in just under 53 minutes.
The initial migration involved 560 million records that were successfully migrated in under 24 hours! Now the same number of records can be migrated, using high-levels of automation, in just under 11 hours, but with absolute confidence of success.
Sandro Vita, General Manager: Information Systems at CGIC, said that "We understand that this is an innovative use of JMR Software's BITSHIFT solution for the replication of data, but it demonstrated to us their versatility, strong IT capability and knowledge in the best approach to solve any IT problem. We had a data warehouse, but it was costly and time-consuming to complete data requests from the business. Now our actuaries can access the data any time, which enables them to run a number of different queries with little or no IT involvement."
BITSHIFT is in place and seen as a strategic solution for migrating the data into a source that allows CGIC's actuaries to access and interrogate the data more readily. It has vastly simplified what was previously a cumbersome and time-consuming process for the IT department.
"BITSHIFT is now running in the background, just as we wanted it to. We see this as a long-term solution, and we'll continue to use it. It has relieved the pressure on us and reduced the need to change our legacy system. We now also have visibility at a detailed level of all the data," says Vivienne Naude, CGIC's Head of Information Technology
The implementation of BITSHIFT within the systems at CGIC took only eight months. Today, Credit Guarantee has full visibility and confidence in their data, and BITSHIFT has been in place for over six months, delivering accurate data every week.
Mike Richards, JMR Software CEO, says, "Every data migration project has a bespoke element, but this was a little different. Usually we're in and working with a company, and when we're done, we're done. It's great to see BITSHIFT working in this way. It also demonstrates the value and expertise that we bring to help financial services companies to get the most out of their legacy systems. Of course, when CGIC are ready to update, we can then help them migrate to a new system as well!"
JMR Software has a 100% success rate of completing complex migration projects on time and in budget. The goal of this project was different: keep the legacy system but enable ongoing access and replication of critical data. The project was completed successfully and has since helped to significantly reduce the time and resources required from the IT department.
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