Case Study: April Technologies achieves IBM i modernization, unified configuration management and rapid Web‑service deployment with ARCAD Software (ARCAD‑Skipper)

ARCAD-Skipper for SOA Development in a Diverse Environment

April Technologies, the IT arm of the April Group’s insurance division, faced the challenge of modernizing a long-standing IBM i development environment while adopting an ILE/DB2 back end and a .NET front end, moving to an SOA model, and consolidating configuration management across heterogeneous platforms. To avoid rewriting legacy code and to support Web services integration, April Technologies selected ARCAD Software’s ARCAD-Skipper to maintain IBM i development and to encapsulate and deploy Web services as part of its Information Technology Master Plan.

ARCAD Software implemented ARCAD-Skipper through pilot projects and a staged migration (beginning June 2006), migrating key applications such as April Courtage and scheduling the April Assurances switchover for 20 January 2007; by February 2007 April Technologies was managing all IBM i development with ARCAD tools. ARCAD-Skipper delivered configuration management for OPM and ILE, handled Java-generated wrappers as a WebSphere plug-in and automated EAR deployment for Web Services, resulting in faster development, reduced costs, rapid external service exposure to .NET/PHP/Flash clients, and reuse of business functions without full rewrites.

April Technologies

Gilles Gozlan

Technical Architect