Royal London’s Scottish Life Secures Its Own Future with a New Itanium-Based solution from HP and Oracle - IT Perspective

The IT Challenge

Scottish Life's original mainframe IT system, rolled out in 1993, did indeed provide the right performance for its time. As the years passed, business needs changed, the number of data records exploded to three-quarters of a billion, and the code base, with programs written in multiple languages over some 15 years, expanded significantly. Hardware upgrades also continued to keep pace to some extent, but added complexity to the solution set and added maintenance costs as well.

Even with the use of heavily automated systems to manage the schedules, printing, performance monitoring, and event management, the system was not able to keep pace with data growth and the even faster rate of customer information demands. Yet for that very reason, there was considerable concern given to how to move old data records to a new platform; how to convert the legacy code base without losing many of the unique algorithms created for Scottish Life; how to add even more advanced financial modeling and information management tools; and, finally, how to do all of this while keeping costs down for the long term.

The Solution

Scottish Life worked with Itanium® Solutions Alliance partners HP, Micro Focus, and Oracle. After selecting HP's rx8620 12-processor Itanium® server as the core for its solution, Scottish Life was able to use MSS International's unique translation software to automatically convert programs in proprietary languages and legacy COBOL code into Oracle PL/SQL, C & Micro Focus COBOL, which could then run on any platform, making it both easy to integrate into the present solution and provide flexibility going forward. In addition, the legacy pension software application was moved to Cobal85 and data records were converted into an Oracle 9i database. Beyond this, HP and Oracle also provided new system software and operational support utilities to manage the new server and data systems.

To assist in managing high-capacity demands for the data, HP allocated 8 of its 12 Itanium 2® processors for production - but set aside the remaining 4 for its Instant Capacity on Demand (ICOD) capability. That feature, part of the HP Virtual Server Environment, enables extra computing capacity on-site, preconfigured, cabled, powered up and ready to go whenever needed. That configuration provides fallback for processor failures and additional capacity for special events requiring heavier computing capability than normal.

This initial system was set up in Scottish Life's Winslow facility, located near Manchester, England. To deal with the remote, but mission-critical demand of protection against potential disasters involving one data site, Scottish Life also installed a complete duplicate system in Edinburgh, Scotland, some 200 miles away from the main production system. Using Oracle Data Guard, the IT team configured a disaster recovery clone of the original system in all aspects, to provide full mirroring of service support and data between the two sites. The resulting combined system can switch from the main facility to the clone almost instantaneously in the event of even the slightest disruption of service by the main system.

The Results

Even before selecting the final solution, in trial tests conducted by Scottish Life's IT team, the Itanium 2® microprocessor demonstrated raw power that exceeded that of competitive high-end microprocessors. It showed substantial performance improvements in time-constrained, often single-threaded batch runs, as well as in mixed online environments where transaction processing demands competed with background batch processing.

In the final configuration, the combination of Itanium 2® microprocessor power with precisely tuned applications produced major speed improvements for the entire system, with nightly batch runs that used to take 12 hours now taking only 8 hours to complete. This saves operational costs, and allows for running additional batch processes during the week to satisfy ad hoc requests and handle workload variations. Special processing runs, like end-of-month closings, are now also run within normal batch run windows. In addition, the processing of some special exceptionally large business activities now takes minutes instead of the hours previously required for them.

System availability, another key factor in supporting improved service levels , is also much better under the new system, with nearly 100 percent uptime during its first year of operation. On-line service operation was also enhanced, with response times improving even as the computing load increased, unlike the variable response times from the legacy systems.

The number of long response delays -- of 10 seconds or longer -- decreased from more than 30 events a minute to just a few per minute. Average response times to on-line data requests are also faster, averaging about 0.6 seconds versus up to as high as 1.0 seconds, measured over a several month period. This is in spite of a 20 percent-increase in the number of transactions, compared with the previous system usage rate.

In just one example of how response delays and processing times add up, payment processing used to take three hours and multiple attempts to pass through the IT infrastructure. Now it takes only five minutes and is completed in one pass.

Not surprisingly, because of all the speed and system availability improvements, IT executives are finding new applications and data analysis opportunities for the valuable information Scottish Life has gathered. Today, some 1,500 to 2,800 batch programs run at night compared to 1,200 to 1,800 in the prior system.

All this was accomplished while cutting the Total Cost of Ownership of the system by a factor of two - over the next five years - compared to what would have occurred if the existing legacy system continued to grow. IT support costs are projected to be lower in general, due to:

• The system's architectural simplification;
• The fact that Intel Itanium 2® based server architectures are easier to upgrade - so that hardware enhancements are expected to run only five percent of what they would have with the previous system; and
• The use of an open-system architecture, which in turn lowered application and middleware software costs.

Testimonial

"The example of Scottish Life is further proof that companies can improve operational efficiency and business agility without risking the loss of vital business data and competitive advantage." -- Stuart McGill, Chief Technology Officer, Micro Focus

The Scottish Life Solution Set

Hardware

• HP Integrity servers with Intel Itanium 2 processors, models rx2470, rx2600, and rx8620 running HP-UX 11i
• HP 9000 (PA-RISC) servers, models rp4440, rp3440, rp7410 running HP-UX 11i
• 2 x SANs based on HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array Systems
• 2 x HP ESL9322 tape libraries with three 460 LTO2 tape drives

Software

• Oracle 9i Database
• Oracle Application Server & Oracle Management Packs
• Oracle Data Guard for data replication between test and production systems
• HP OpenView for hardware, UNIX, network and Oracle monitoring
• Micro Focus Studio & Server for legacy applications development