Agenda
• Overview of BCBSSC
• BCBSSC Web and Desk Top applications
• BCBSSC and SOA
• SOA Thoughts
• BCBSSC & SOA Express
• Q &A
Overview of BCBSSC
• BCBSSC has represented the BlueCross
BlueShield brand in South Carolina for 61years
• BCBSSC is a mutual insurance company and
includes numerous “Companion” subsidiaries
 Dealing with Life Insurance, Property & Casualty,
HMO, Technology, Data Center Services, etc…..
• Major governmental contracts dealing with
Medicare, TRICARE, VA Hero
BCBSSC
Information Systems (I/S) Division
• Centralized IT organization supporting systems
development and data center.
• I/S Division provides support for BCBSSC and well as
out-sourcing support for external clients
 Business within a business
• Well respected for technology advancements within
BCA family.
• Recent contract awarded as one of three data centers
supporting CMS (Medicare)
My Role within the I/S
Organization
• Director, Internal Resource Management (IRM)
 Programming Support
• Manage the existence and support for all internal tools
• Liaison between Development staff and Tech Support
 Recovery Management
 Analytics
 Quality Assurance
Focus on Core Competency
One of the I/S Guiding Principles for the last 20+ years has
been to focus on our core competency.
Developing and supporting software that support the Health
Insurance industry with unique functions and features that
differentiate a client from their competition
To achieve this we leverage other companies core
competencies for specialized knowledge and technology
offerings.
Ex: 1. Clinical Management software Contains in depth medial knowledge of treatment
plans and case studies
2. SOA Express code generator
Web Services generation, LINK3270 expertise
BCBSSC
Web and Desktop Applications
• BCBSSC Web and Desktop applications have been
highly functional (not just text) from day one.
• They are true portals into our core applications.
• Have received numerous National, Regional and State
awards
BCBSSC
Web and Desktop Applications
• However, the underlying technology is antiquated
and reaching its limit to handle the growing level of
usage.
Under TN3270 each screen “action” requires
communications to occur across the network
with each screen action. The response time is
the same as any user accessing the information
through normal green screens.
TN
3
270
CICS Test Region
MQ Client
ClientSoft
Proprietary
(S )
HTTP
Web Server
Workstation
Screen
Scraping
WebPack Server
SOA – Service Oriented Architecture
• The following Architectural principles have been
engrained into BCBSSC’s development strategy for 20+
years





Modularity
Loose coupling
Reuse
Encapsulation
Flexibility
• SOA is today’s packaging of these long standing
principles
• Web Services is a communication protocol that provides
support for these principles within today’s technology
MFEEE SOA Capability SOA Express
SOA Express code generator enables IT organizations to
capture complete CICS business processes and
produces industry-standard components in the form of
JavaBeans, EJBs, COM, Web Services and XML that
are reusable throughout the enterprise.
We are leveraging Micro Focus’ core competency to
generate the appropriate code, while we focus on
the insurance industry.
We can modernize the application without having to
develop expertise in the technology.
BCBSSC
Web and Desktop applications
• SOA Express code generator provides a
SOA standard presentation layer for
SOA Express
mainframe applications with
Generated
COBOL
extraordinary performance.
Program
Web
Service
MQ Client
HTTP
TCP/IP
(S)
Web Server
Workstation
WebShere Server
CICS TXN
CICS Region
MQ
• LINK3270 high speed CICS interface provides
program to program interaction moving the
processing logic to the mainframe.
LINK3270
Transaction
Scraping
MFEEE SOA Capability
SOA Express
SOA Express generates the entire component, middleware and back-end
source code needed to access mainframe CICS applications with the latest
technologies. No hand coding or changes to existing systems is required.
Automated
Publishing
UDDI
UDDI
Generated
WSDL
CICS Region
Automated
Deployment
Application
Application
Server
Server
COBOL
Service
MQ
Interface
SOAP
Router
Java Bean
(or EJB)
MQ
MQ
Interface
COBOL
Service
CG Server
Runtime
COBOL
Service
Web
WebServices
Services
Client
Client
application
application
Test
Client
Application
Users
Commarea
Programs
3270
Bridge
Users 3270
TXs
Data
Acce ss
Component
SOA Express – Results
Response Time Improvement
• MQ & LINK3270 versus TN3270 Response Time
improved from 8 to 10 fold
Compare WebPack vs Web Service Determine ID
3000
2500
.12
seconds
versus
1.02
seconds
1500
1000
500
Iteration
Webpack DB
Web Service DB
Linear (Webpack DB)
Linear (Web Service DB)
100
97
94
91
88
85
82
79
76
73
70
67
64
61
58
55
52
49
46
43
40
37
34
31
28
25
22
19
16
13
7
10
4
0
1
Time (ms)
2000
SOA Express – Results
Response Time Improvement
• Customer Desk Top experiences 2-12 fold
improvement based upon data volume
CSR Desktop Performance, Health
30.00s
25.00s
Response Time (s)
20.00s
WebPack
15.00s
Comp. Gen.
10.00s
5.00s
0.00s
0
181
Number of Claims
SOA Express – Results
Scalable with minimal overhead
MQ & LINK3270 leverage Host scalability
capabilities
MQ Client
/IP
TCP
TC
P/
IP
(S)
HTTP
Test Workstation
TC
P
/IP
WebSphere 6.0
J2EE App Server
TCP/IP
Web Server
MVS MQ Server
UDDI Server
CICS Test Region
SOA Express – Results
The NEXT Level of Scalability:
Through WebSphere Application Server for LINUX under z/OS the
execution of our generated services will occur on the Enterprise Server.
Providing further performance and scalability improvements.
Enterprise Server
z/OS
VM
LINUX
Web Sphere
SOA Express – Results
Coding done at application logical level not requiring CICS, Web
Service, LINK3270 detailed technical knowledge
CICS
Transaction
and
Presentation
Layer
Independence
SOA Express – Results
• Deployment options independent of
Service navigation logic
 Middleware Independence and Flexibility
• Through utilizing a code generator the
following will be achieved
 Code Consistency
 Reduction in volume of code to maintain
 Increased productivity
Micro Focus Core Competencies
We Have and Will Be Leveraging
 Application Code Generation

COBOL expertise
 Teleprocessing Interface

Link3270
 Middleware Interface

MQ
 SOA Code Generation


Web Services
EJB
Q&A