Micro Focus Technology and Expertise Support Successful Mainframe Modernisation Project for AG

Belgium's largest insurer transforms critical business services to support their three million clients and distribution partners

BRUSSELS, Sept. 12, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Global digital transformation leader Micro Focus (LSE: MCRO; NYSE: MFGP) today announced the successful modernisation of AG's mission-critical business systems. By using Micro Focus solutions and services, Belgium's largest and oldest insurance provider has established a contemporary, collaborative application development environment that meets the company's current needs, while enabling continued evolution and future change.

During the significant modernisation project, critical applications comprising more than 80 million lines of code were moved from the incumbent mainframe system to new infrastructure that supports 14 million transactions per day. The project began in mid-2018 with a completion goal of four years. The efficiency of the project resulted in its completion in three years. Vitally, during the transition and since, there were no interruptions to daily business activities for AG or the services offered for its three million clients.

"The whole operation has resulted in an innovative and open environment that enables a new data-driven strategy, as well as our company enjoying a lower total cost of ownership now and far into the future," said Philippe Van Belle, Chief Information & Technology Officer of AG. The modernisation project opened the door for utilising the cloud and aligned operational systems more closely with the data analytics systems. The end result is a modern IT infrastructure that allows AG to efficiently meet its customer and distribution partners expectations and needs. We couldn't have realised this huge project without the partnership and excellent collaboration with Micro Focus."

In addition to bolstering its already excellent customer services, AG is now accelerating its own digital transformation with its modernised IT architecture. As part of this change, AG will now offer more services and conduct business operations in the cloud as they leverage new technologies in their continued digital evolution. Another advantage of the modernisation project is that AG has a cutting-edge environment for the recruitment of a new generation of developers, as well as the retention of existing talent with an uplift in development skills and program knowledge.

"The completion of this project with AG is the latest in an extensive line of successful core business system modernisation projects for Micro Focus," said Neil Fowler, Micro Focus AMC General Manager. "Our role was to enable and support AG's modernisation journey as they delivered their business outcomes through a combination of application, process and infrastructure modernisation. This has resulted in an agile platform that allows AG to leverage their core applications and continue to deliver increasing value to their customers. With Micro Focus' more than 40 years of experience in modernising business-critical applications running on the mainframe or distributed environments, we as a company are proud of the results that we were able to deliver to AG.

"AG has been a Micro Focus customer for more than ten years, and we look forward to seeing the positive impacts that this modernisation project has on the insurance services AG provides to its customers and the company's reduction in TCO for its infrastructure."

The modernisation project entailed the shift of AG's z/OS workloads to a Windows-based environment. To do so, AG utilised the Micro Focus Enterprise Developer and Enterprise Server products, as well as the expertise of the company's Professional Services group. The AG modernisation project also included collaboration from HP Enterprise as system integrator and Capgemini as the testing partner.

As a company, Micro Focus supports its customers' choice for modernising their applications, process and infrastructure. Digital transformation demands a flexible and adaptive strategy aimed at improving results and accelerating time to value. Through the Micro Focus Modernisation Maturity Model, IT leaders can quickly map their current IT environment to their future business strategy—while finding the right balance between costs, risk and speed.

"The mainframe served AG well over the years. However, more connectivity was required, as well as the integration of core systems to key business partners and the integration of data and services. We transformed our IT infrastructure to ensure that AG will continue be a leader in the insurance industry. We will begin phase two of AG's digital transformation soon with an extensive cloud integration that will enable us to easily adapt to new technologies as they emerge." Philippe Van Belle, Chief Information and Technology Officer at AG.

"One of the biggest threats during a mainframe modernisation project is business disruption. Because of the detailed and extensive planning from the Micro Focus and AG teams, there were no disruptions to AG operations or its customers. The switch to the new IT infrastructure took place during the Easter holiday weekend, with activities running normally when the following workweek began. We are pleased to have helped deliver such exceptional results for our customer and their three million clients." Stephen Murdoch, CEO of Micro Focus. 

Case Study: Micro Focus Enterprise solutions support large-scale mainframe modernization for an innovative and open environment processing 14 million transactions a day

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Micro Focus is one of the world's largest enterprise software providers, focused on solving the IT dilemma—how to balance today's needs with tomorrow's opportunities. We deliver mission-critical technology that helps tens of thousands of customers worldwide manage core IT elements of their business. Strengthened by our strategic services and support organisations, and an extensive partner network, our broad set of technologies for security, IT operations, application delivery, governance, modernisation, and analytics provides the innovative solutions organisations need to run and transform— at the same time.

With a share (end 2021) of 29,5% in the Life insurance market and 16.7% in Non-life, AG is the undisputed leader in the Belgian insurance market. To better tailor its offer to fulfil different customer needs, AG has a multi-channel distribution strategy that includes independent brokers and Fintro agents, bank branches (BNP Paribas Fortis, bpost bank) and collaboration with large corporate clients and sectors for their group insurance. AG employs over 4,000 specialised staff members. More information on www.ag.be

Contact: [email protected]

SOURCE Micro Focus