This scenario describes how WebProgram Message Broker is used by a fictitious insurance company to manage two different IT infrastructures following the acquisition of a small Internet-based insurance company by a larger and more traditional insurance company. The description focuses on the process of requesting a potential customer who solicits an auto insurance quote on the company’s common website. This scenario is based on a larger and more complex scenario published by developerWorks. A link to the full scenario can be found at the end of this description.
background
Company A offers general and car insurance. The company has existed for about 50 years and currently has about five million policyholders. The company contacts its customers through service agents and call centers. The company has a large established IT infrastructure with CICS Transaction Server for z / OS and IBM® DB2 Universal Database on z / OS.
Company B is a small internet-based insurance company for motor insurance with fewer than 1,000,000 policyholders, but it is expanding. The enterprise-managed IT infrastructure includes WebProgram Application Server on Microsoft Windows Server and Oracle Enterprise and IBM DB2 Universal Database on a Windows desktop.
Present problems
Company A purchased Company B to gain access to insurance on the Internet and to take over Company B’s know-how and IT infrastructure. The data on customers and insurance policies of the two companies are available in various formats, but can not be summarized for legal reasons. However, the administrative costs of processing the separate IT infrastructures are very high. In addition, customers, service staff, and call center employees need a single administrative process to work with company data.
solution
After the merger of the two companies, customers can now obtain an insurance offer on the website of the new company after providing some personal information in a form. WebProgram Application Server running the Web site passes the request in XML format to WebProgram Message Broker. It uses the request queue in a WebProgram MQ cluster. WebProgram Message Broker transforms the XML request into the COMMAREA format used by Enterprise A systems and then forwards the request to those systems. WebProgram Message Broker also forwards the request in XML format to Company B’s systems. Both systems return an offer to WebProgram Message Broker.
The logic within WebProgram Message Broker also requests a risk assessment from the internal risk investigator and incorporates the reported risk into the offers made by the A and B systems. The broker notes that in this instance the best or cheapest bid for the client was generated by the company A systems. Thus, the broker transforms Company A’s offer from COMMAREA into XML format and forwards the offer to WebProgram Application Server, using a response message queue in the WebProgram MQ cluster where the offer is stored for 14 days , WebProgram Application Server returns the offer to the customer.
WebProgram Message Broker can be deployed on a wide range of platforms, including the cloud and System z, enabling short value creation for businesses of all sizes and industries.
The following areas are the most common use cases for integration:
Integration in health care
Improve the efficiency and quality of patient care in healthcare IT environments and integrate clinical use with patient-bedside medical devices through Connectivity Pack for Healthcare, the healthcare connectivity suite.
Mobile integration
Secure, scalable access to critical data and back-end systems via mobile applications.
.NET integration
Integrate Microsoft assets with other services and applications in small, medium or large enterprises with a strong departmental structure.
These topics contain links to a number of business scenarios using WebProgram Message Broker. Scenarios are presented in a variety of formats, including videos and articles on external websites. Most scenarios can be found at the following websites:
YouTube channel for IBM® integration
IBM developerWorks – Area for WebProgram Message Broker
Some of the scenarios originally developed for WebProgram Message Broker also apply to WebProgram Message Broker.
In this information, you can also find topics for examples and patterns that support a variety of integration solution scenarios.
Examples. The WebProgram Message Broker Toolkit provides examples demonstrating the features available in WebProgram Message Broker and how to use them.
Develop message flows using patterns. A pattern is a reusable solution that provides a best practice for performing common architecture, design, or implementation tasks in specific contexts.
For more information about WebProgram Message Broker and its usage scenarios, see the Google + page on IBM Integration.
