Commonwealth Automobile Reinsurers Deploys Ivory Data Access

Ivory Data Access Solutions Helps Minimize Data Congestion, Increases Reliability

ATLANTA, Georgia – May 21st, 2009 – GT Software, a leading global provider of proven, cost-effective mainframe integration and data access solutions, today announced that Commonwealth Automobile Reinsurers (CAR),  has achieved a “five-fold performance improvement” using the GT Software Ivory Data Access solution.   

Whether it’s the information or automobile highway, congestion can be a big problem, and CAR found an answer to its data flow issues using the Ivory technology from GT Software. In addition to the remarkable data traffic performance improvements, the Ivory Data Access solution has helped CAR improve data quality and eliminate the former occurrences of reruns of work that had failed to upload during overnight processing.

CAR serves two functions to drivers and insurance companies doing business in Massachusetts.

As statistical agent, CAR collects, edits, and processes Massachusetts private passenger and commercial automobile premium and loss statistics. The data is subsequently provided to the Automobile Insurers Bureau of Massachusetts, the Merit Rating Board, and the Highway Loss Data Institute. Any company writing vehicle insurance in Massachusetts is required to be a member of CAR.

As the industry-operated residual market for motor vehicle insurance, CAR provides access to private passenger and commercial motor vehicle liability and physical damage insurance to owners and drivers who are unable to obtain coverage through the voluntary market.

In both roles, CAR handles massive amounts of data. Quality and timeliness are of paramount importance, as the Massachusetts Division of Insurance constantly evaluates this information.

Besides congestion, growth led to an error recovery problem where a number of web reports could be unavailable at critical times. Since the work was run as a batch job overnight, an abnormal stop could mean having to restart the job in the morning. The re-run could take as much as 55 minutes, which meant that some reports were not provided on time and CAR would not meet its service level expectations.

At an industry trade show, CAR learned that a public agency in another state had overcome a similar problem using Ivory Data Access from GT Software. CAR contacted GT Software and began an Ivory Data Access proof of concept. After several data transfers, the increase in speed was compelling.

“A five-fold performance improvement makes life a lot easier,” said Peter McCabe, director of applications development. “It’s like replacing a back road with a superhighway. No more traffic lights or stop signs.”

Ivory Data Access replaced a legacy software product that had become inadequate.  McCabe’s group implemented the Ivory Data Access Administrative Console on a server that was hosting Microsoft SQL Server; the ODBC component was installed on the CAR web servers and the workstations of a number of CAR users. Also, with the help of Ivory Data Access, data collection is now accomplished on the web, and then uploaded to the mainframe, which is still used for the heavy number-crunching. This summarized information is then downloaded to SQL Server and made available to CAR’s customers (insurance companies) on their web site.

In production, the improvements were as dramatic as in the trial, with an added benefit: if there is a problem in overnight processing, Ivory recovers in time so that morning deadlines are always met. “Since implementing Ivory Data Access, we have not had an instance of companies not getting their reports on time,” said McCabe.

“Ivory Data Access makes life a lot easier for me and my staff,” remarked McCabe. “It is a critical part of our technology landscape. Using this GT Software solution, we are more reliable and responsive to our customer needs.”

“The Ivory Data Access deployment at CAR is a testament to the immediate results that can be achieved and the powerful efficiency and reliability this solution brings to organizations,” remarked GT Software Chief Strategy Officer Rob Morris. “Across all industries, organizations are dependent on accessing data and generating reports from their existing core mainframe data that are accurate and timely. With the help of Ivory Data Access enterprises can take advantage of their robust mainframe data capabilities to support any combination of SQL and Web Service transaction processing. We at GT Software are always pleased to see customers like CAR achieve such exemplary results using our solutions.”