Univé is a not-for-profit co-operative society—its customers are also its members. The business concept of Univé is focused on providing the best services to its members/customers and not primarily on corporate profit objectives. Univé offers a complete range of insurances and financial services, such as life and non-life policies as well as mortgage loans. Univé serves both the consumer and the business markets. The company's ambition is to become the preferred provider of insurance products for consumers in the Netherlands, and to be among the top three in terms of price-performance ratio of its products. Univé has about 1.3 million customers that have a total of 3.7 million insurance policies. It employs more than 3,100 people.
Introduction of SOA at Univé
In 2004, Univé defined a new vision for its information systems architecture. This mind shift introduced a services oriented architecture within the Univé organisation. The former stove pipe approach was replaced by a new architecture in which components or 'services' collaborate to deliver the required functionality. This new multi-tier architecture is developed around the requirements of the business users, ensuring that Univé's services network is aligned with its business goals.
SOA Runtime Governance
Univé will use AmberPoint software solutions to ensure the health of its services oriented systems. AmberPoint's SOA Management System uses a ground-breaking policy-based management approach that helps organisations achieve better, more adaptive end-to-end control of evolving services-based applications. This is achieved by dynamically implementing policies in the runtime environment.
"The legacy IT stove pipes we have in place no longer reflect our business processes," said Bob Alberts, Project Manager for Univé. "AmberPoint's SOA Management System will enable us to monitor and manage our new SOA infrastructure and ensure that it is scalable, reliable and secure. This services-based approach will not only deliver greater IT and economic efficiencies, but will also streamline our internal business processes, providing both significant performance improvements and greater flexibility."
Integration with Microsoft Operations Manager
The integration with Microsoft Operation Manager (MOM) was an important consideration in Univé's selection of AmberPoint. Univé uses the MOM solution for performance and availability management of its distributed Windows environment. AmberPoint's management software and MOM complement each other perfectly. With the combined functionality of the two software solutions, Univé is able to monitor and manage its distributed information systems on an enterprise level.
Univé is the latest insurance company to adopt the AmberPoint SOA Management System. In recent months, Aflac, the U.S. insurance giant, Vital Forsikring ASA, Norway's largest life and pensions insurance company, and Mondial Assistance in France have all standardised on AmberPoint, along with more than one hundred other organisations across other major vertical markets.
Insurance companies have much to gain from SOA. Many typically have large investments in legacy systems, as well as heterogeneous environments resulting from M&A activity. In this highly competitive market, quality of service is often the key to customer retention. Business opportunities are quick to surface. SOA enables insurance companies to unlock legacy assets, connect stovepipes and make optimal use of heterogeneous systems that can talk to each other via standards.
About Systemation
Systemation provides organisations with advanced IT-solutions that enable enterprises to modernise and simplify their IT architecture, processes, applications and infrastructure. Systemation focuses on two areas:
About AmberPoint
AmberPoint is the industry's leading provider of SOA runtime governance solutions. More than 100 customers, including Best Buy, H&R Block, MedicAlert Foundation, Motorola, Vital Forsikring ASA, the U.S. Department of Defense and now Univé, have chosen AmberPoint for its comprehensive capabilities, its non-invasive approach and its native support for Java and .NET.
Press Contacts:
Jaap Franse, Directeur
Postbus 465, 2800 AL Gouda, NL
Tel.: +31 (0) 18 268 9129
Email: jaap.franse@systemation.nl
AmberPoint, Inc.
Willie Kirkpatrick
Vice President, EMEA
Tel: +44 (0)7778 613923
Email: wkirkpatrick@amberpoint.com
