Case Study: Mississippi Farm Bureau Insurance defers $2M in CPU upgrades and slashes nightly batch time with Compuware Strobe

Insurance Firm Wards Off Costly CPU Upgrades with Compuware Strobe

Southern Farm Bureau Casualty Insurance Company (SFBCIC), a major U.S. property-and-casualty insurer covering about 2.1 million policies/vehicles, faced rising MIPS consumption and slowing nightly batch windows as it consolidated seven data centers and migrated from VSE to OS/390. With batch jobs required to finish before the next workday and CPU upgrades occurring every 6–8 months, the company needed to improve mainframe performance without adding hardware costs.

SFBCIC deployed Compuware Strobe, a mainframe APM that quickly pinpoints inefficiencies down to the line of code. After simple code fixes identified by Strobe, nightly batch time fell from 2.5 hours to 45 minutes, MIPS usage remained stable for about 20 months, and planned CPU upgrades were deferred—saving roughly $2 million—while Strobe continues to be used daily to prevent future bottlenecks.

Mississippi Farm Bureau Insurance

Jane Sullivan

IT Business Services Manager, SFBCIC