MDA Success Story

Payment system for Postgirot Bank AB

Type of Industry: Financial Services

Application Name: NOVA

Description:
Postgirot Bank AB is the largest institute for payment services on the Swedish market and has been in operation since the 1920s. Postgirot manages on average two million transactions per day.

Problem:
Postgirot came to the conclusion that their payments system was on the end of its life cycle. This legacy system had become inflexible and its maintenance cost became too high so it was necessary to replace it. In addition to that it was cumbersome to add new products, something that is being enforced by the changing market circumstances. Straight through integration with other systems was also a deciding factor.

Solution:
EDCubed did not only propose to replace the existing legacy system but also prevent the creation of a new one by offering a technology independent solution. EDCubed technology, based on OMG's MDA,™ delivers this benefit.

Specific demands on the new IT infrastructure were:

• Capture new markets fast by allowing fast implementation of new products and product features in order to decrease time to market of new product
• One flexible information system supporting all the payment transmission business. The system also needed to be future proof
• Better insight and lower operational costs by utilizing online real time processing capabilities and straight through processing
• Integrated with the other systems both internal and external to Postgirot
• Low deployment and maintenance costs
• Able to process up to 30 Million transactions per day.

EDCubed applied OMG's MDA to model these demands into EDCubed MDA technology. The business model was modeled into a Platform Independent Model (PIM) entailing that the users remained focused on the business needs without being distracted by technical constraints.

From the PIM the Platform Specific Model (PSM) is for the fully 100% generated including database optimization and deployment scripts. The PSM of choice in this case was OS/390, Cobol and DB2.

Due to the Platform Independent Model (PIM) Postgirot can decide any moment in time to switch to J2EE or another technology. The new PSM can be generated in half an hour time!! Hence preventing the creation of a new legacy problem. Performance optimizations are also handled by EDCubed's technology.

The separation between business needs captured in a PIM and the technical implementation generated in a PSM is one of the pillars of the MDA concept. The advantages for clients are evident.

At this point in time all payment products are or will be added to the platform and all services are taken over by the new system. The flexibility and the way new products can be added fast to the system is very important for the competitive edge of Postgirot.

Benefits:
EDCubed proposed a solution that came in only 25% of the proposals of contenders. This was possible by applying its 'Model Driven' technology that generates 100% customized code. After generation it is production ready, no changes need to be made in the source code or the database scripts.

Due to the unprecedented speed of developing combined with the knowledge of EDCubed the project was finished within the proposed budget and short time frame. Due to the low cost and fast development the ROI of the system is very short.

Maintenance takes place in the model and from there the application is being generated. Processing changes has never been so easy and so cheap.

If fact due to the low maintenance cost of the new system the ROI is less then two years based on only the maintenance costs of the old system.

Johan Larsson - Postgirot Bank (Manager System Development & Maintenance):
"TET (The EDCubed Technology) makes developing your system the least of your problems"

Thanks to EDCubed's solution, Postgirot is now experiencing the following benefits:

• Financial Gain - The operational cost are down 80% compared to the old situation.
• Flexibility - New products can be added quickly and new technology can be introduced without being stopped by legacy
• Scalable - The solution can grow from handling 2 Million to 30 Million transactions per day.

Founded in 1997 EDCubed mission is to simplify complexIT. By applying its MDA compliant technology EDCubed is able to deliver tailor made solution yet at the price of a package solution. The EDCubed organization is present in the Netherlands, Sweden and the Baltic States. Further international expansion is in progress.

EDCubed is an OMG member. For more information vist www.edcubed.com or contact info@edcubed.com