Re: MAINFRAME SHOP STANDARDS

From: Frederico Fonseca (real-email-in-msg-spam_at_email.com)
Date: 12/11/04 

Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 12:42:45 +0000

On Sun, 12 Dec 2004 00:38:07 +1300, "Pete Dashwood"
<dashwood@enternet.co.nz> wrote:

>
snip
>>
>There was a time when that was the only way. And it was not a bad way. I am
>extremely sceptical about the prices that Frederico quoted (sorry, I'm not
>suggesting he lied, just that the companies bidding were certainly
>sandbagging the quote. People who didn't want the system changed would
>encourage this also...)
This customer was a branch of a multinational. Due to legal contraints
they had already spent a huge amount of money getting a package
adapted to their needs, not only the legal ones, but also in terms of
products. Then the brains from head-office decided that it would be a
good idea of moving them from this package to a Oracle one, and have
both this branch and one in another country using the same package.
Prices were indeed on the region I mentioned, and the size of the team
involved on this for 2 years was supposed to require 70 analysts and
programmers.

>
>At the end of the day, the system Frederico described MUST be meeting the
>needs or it would HAVE to be replaced/upgraded. I believe the problems will
>arise as it moves towards the end of its life cycle but time will tell. Even
>adding Java front ends and so on will prolong the life for a finite period
>(as opposed to "indefinitely"). Eventually the underlying engines will wear
>out or become over maintained or there simply won't be the skill available
>to maintain them.
Application is still being improved and new functionality is being
added to it in terms of new products. In many cases to add a new
insurance product is only a question of modifying a few(not that
few!!) tables, and add new product rules to product files.
New development is required because there are things that the product
does not/did not do. I for instance added Claims functionality to the
product when I was there. But even this did not add all type of
claims, and when I left automatic calculation of Death claims was
still not possible due to the business not be willing to spend x
amount of money to develop the required new screens/files to hold the
extra data required when the volume of death claims was very very
small.

Frederico Fonseca
ema il: frederico_fonseca at syssoft-int.com

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