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Intranet As An Evolutionary Tool Of The Information System Intranet As An Evolutionary Tool Of The Information System • • • • • • • • • Customers, Salesforce, Securities, Investment Funds, Portfolio Management, Life Insurance, MIS Reports, Marketing, General Accounting WAN (Salesforce, Customers, Visitors) WWW TCP/IP “Direct Access” Firewall Internet Servers digital AppleTalk LAN SNA Gateway MVS Mainframe digital MVS Mainframe Access Username Check (User NT) Dynamic PSW Check (Activcard) Standard Browsing through URLs CGI queue handling, up to DB server answers SAS Demon: Validity check, Data processing, HTML answers CGI queue handling up to DB server Answers, PDF building SAS Demon Data search (and link to the mainframe), “rough” answer build-up PDF pages derived from “rough” answer digital TSO Connection through “SAS Connect” MVS Mainframe ISAPI connection to 3270 sessions and HTML answer HTML conversion of the display layout by the 3270 Sessions Handler Synchronization between 3270 sessions and Web requests digital LU 6.2 connections through TN3270 (up to 256 sessions) MVS Mainframe INTRANET AS AN EVOLUTIONARY TOOL OF THE INFORMATION SYSTEM by Giovanni Maio and Nucci Verderio Finanza & Futuro – Gruppo Deutsche Bank ABSTRACT A financial company owning a full coverage legacy information system needs defining an evolutionary path which can • protect existing IT investments, • spread the range of functions, and add new ones, • simplify both access and use rules, • increase the user base. When used together, SAS and Internet technologies give a positive answer to all of these requirements because they • provide a multiplatform standard, backward compatible with all existing systems, • ease the integration among mixed data or applications, • simplify transfer and logistic problems, • help building a user friendly interface. In Finanza & Futuro, these guidelines have led to a new generation information system, which includes all the functions needed by headquarters to perform all standard operations and controls, and provides all sorts of data mining and detailed analysis, as needed by sales forces throughout the country. Such a system can also deliver custom-made informations and self-service facilities to customers. THE COMPANY Finanza & Futuro was founded at the end of 1986 in Italy, and has grown up since then developing and offering financial products and services aimed to the retail market: these products and services include mutual funds, portfolio management and life insurances, and are sold through a door to door salesforce. In 1995 the company entered the Deutsche Bank group, and is now part of the Asset Management Unit of the Bank. At the moment, the assets under management exceed 14,000 billion Lire (7.23 billion WKH FRPSDQ\ KDV DERXW customers, and the salesforce counts more than 1,150 salespersons, with about 250 employees at the headquarter offices. I.T. STATE OF THE ART AT PROJECT START-UP The company processes all of its operations through a proprietary information system, which handles customers, sales, tradings, mutual funds, portfolio management, life insurances, reports, marketing, and accounting. This fully integrated “legacy” system was developed in-house – using Cobol, DB2 and SAS –, and was intended to support all operations and requirements as needed by the headquarters offices. Service to the salesforce was also provided, mainly in the form of reports which were distributed on a regular basis. Following market requirements, an evolution of the system was therefore needed, in order to allow each sales person to exactly reach the information they might need, updating it as necessary and giving it the form which might best fit their realtime requirements. 2 A further evolution was also needed to provide the headquarters’ with a true decision support system. EVOLUTIONARY PLAN Some rules have to be followed when planning the evolution of such a complex information system: • the previous IT investment is to be saved, • new functionalities are to be implemented as improvements of the existing system, • a more friendy interface has to be made available, • services must be provided to a wider audience. At the same time, a strict control should be kept upon the information flow and organization, in order to keep a tight IT structure and affordable costs. In that perspective, the optimum solution is providing the user with top flexibility, while still keeping a centralized approach to data processing, in order to minimize the problems in logistics, synchronization and security areas, which are typical of any classic client/server solution. INTERNET AS THE BEST SOLUTION Some of the above requirements might look conflicting, unless we adopt Internet technologies. Internet saves all the existing EDP services, while allowing new services to be added, with a friendly interface and a multi-platform standard. At the same time, thanks to TCP/IP standards on both Company’s LAN and WAN, a wide variety of information can be shared, with seemigly no special communication skill needed. FINANZA & FUTURO’s INTRANET SERVICES The overall Finanza & Futuro information system appears to be one single ‘ipertext’ with a standard interface, and each user can only access those ‘areas’ and ‘pages’ which he is allowed to use under a strictly ‘need to know’ basis. • • • • • • • The main services include: ‘static’ reports and communications, in the form of standard HTLM pages, ‘automatic’ reports, in the form of HTLM pages built by the computer as a translation of standard batch printouts, ‘dynamic’ reports, in the form of HTLM pages built in realtime while answering to Infocenter queries, customers’ statements, built on demand as PDF reports with the last information available, terminal emulation, through a HTML Gateway to the mainframe, electronic mail, links to other sites. 3 OUTPUT CHARACTERISTICS Output (i.e., documents) can be divided in four main classes. ‘Static’ documents are built and updated by the people who are precisely responsible for the information provided through that output: examples include Company profile, Company products and services, Market reports and analysis, Company orders or directions to personnel and saleforce, etc. ‘Automatic’ documents are built as automatic translations of datacenter outputs whenever batch programs are executed: examples include daily and historical funds evaluations, sales contests results, etc. ‘Dynamic’ documents are built on demand, as realtime answers to queries issued by the users though selection masks: examples include customers’ selections and status, sales results, etc. ‘Translated’ documents can have two forms: 1. HTML pages coming from system functions (an example is a CICS screen during terminal emulation), 2. PDF printouts coming from HTML pages (an example is a customer statement) PROBLEMS Three areas need special attention and are strictly monitored: • security, • system architecture, • “technological loneliness”. NEXT STEPS Three steps are currently given the top priority: • the overall technological platform is being strengthen, • the main Data Base server is being moved back to the mainframe, thanks to SAS platform independence, • more direct services are implemented and offered to the customer base. USE OF SAS SYSTEM SAS has been widely used when developing the company’s information system, and has been a key factor to the success of the project. The main areas where SAS has played its role are: • data mining and data normalization in the mainframe, to feed the Infocenter database, • local update of the Infocenter database, • development of the subsystem needed to build ‘automatic’ web pages, • development of the multiuser subsystem needed to allow access to the Infocenter, providing security controls, filters personalizations, drill down facilities, and ipertextual links to relevant information both in the Infocenter and outside: this subsystem can be splitted among different physical servers; 4 • realtime link between the Infocenter and the mainframe DB2 DBMS, whenever elementary data are to be examined. Milano, May 5th, 1999.