New Re selects Sunopsis for data exchange and consolidation

Sunopsis' data integration products allow organisations to efficiently integrate and share data from disparate data sources without the complexity and cost of traditional data integration solutions.

"During the past ten years, the complexity of our information systems has dramatically increased," explained Marc Gandar, IS Director of New Re. "It has become increasingly difficult to modify and maintain manually-developed data transfer programs. Furthermore, the degree of data quality that is now demanded by the group leads us towards automatic chaining tasks, with computers performing the work and human beings only checking its quality."

Consolidation processes are complex, for example, in one of the cases, New Re's business application, SICS/nt, needs to produce an information set that is then integrated in the SAP application. Other consolidated data is then extracted from this same SAP application and then consolidated again within New Re's systems before being loaded in another SAP module. Furthermore, calculations performed at each step of the data repartition and consolidation are very complex, as well as formats in which this data should be output.

"A recent migration of our applications gave us the opportunity to look closely at the interfaces between applications," Jean-Claude Pommier, Database Administration Manager at New Re, adds. "We wished to implement a solution that would allow us to optimise the management of these interfaces and thus we studied several data integration solutions."

Sunopsis came out as the clear front-runner. "Not only is Sunopsis very flexible to implement, but it also greatly facilitates the deployment of inter application interfaces," Pommier explained. "Compared to manual developments, our productivity has been multiplied by at least a factor of five. And the ease with which Sunopsis morphs complex and changing environments and needs is extraordinary."

Indeed, Sunopsis uses a user-friendly interface to model data exchange processes, including all data transformation rules. And even though changes and maintenance of these processes are performed through this user interface, Sunopsis offers complete visibility on the code that is automatically generated.

Moreover, Sunopsis' unique architecture, using RDBMS engines already present at New Re, did allow a fast ramp up on the product, as Sunopsis generates native code that is executed by the Oracle instances.

"Previously, when application integration requirements grew, so did the complexity of the interfaces. Thanks to Sunopsis, we have regained control not only of the development of these interfaces, but maybe more importantly of their maintenance," said Pommier.

Sunopsis offers indeed unique maintenance features – by providing to developers a centralised development repository, complete cross references, and automatic generation of the project documentation.

Today, about half the inter-application interfaces at New Re have been finished and put into production with Sunopsis. Other interfaces are currently being developed. Once deployed, integration processes are made available to users through Sunopsis' Web execution interface, which does not require a client to be deployed on each workstation.

"The flexibility and ease of use of Sunopsis allow us to increase the reactivity of the IS department to business needs, in a heterogeneous environment of ever changing applications," Marc Gandar concludes. "Thanks to Sunopsis, we will not only react more efficiently to demands from our parent company, but also improve and control the quality of our internal processes."