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CHALLENGES
• Improve cost structure
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Integrate acquisitions
Enable online self-service
• Reduce the risk of mainframe upgrades.
SOLUTIONS
• Harness global scale in software management
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Leverage global software factory
Create development environment
• Develop web services interface with mainframe
• Engage mainframe design engineering staff.
RESULTS
• Software savings from the CSC sysplex
• Low risk, rapid migration
• Maintained software currency
Systems integration in three months
• Online product sales
• Mainframe capacity aligned with business growth
• Service exceeds expectations.
In Australia’s highly aggressive general insurance market, Allianz has been a stand out success story.
Allianz is now Australia’s fourth largest insurance company and a strategically important subsidiary of its
European parent, Allianz SE, the 2007 ‘European
Insurer of the Year’. In a market expanding at only 2% per year, annual growth rates of 7% and 5% in 2005 and 2006, respectively, earned Allianz a AA- rating from Standard & Poor’s in 2007.
The insurer’s success rests on its ability to deliver value for money – as evidenced by its 2007 National Five Star
Rating for car insurance – and respond effectively to changes in consumer demand. Underpinning its service culture and competitive products is a highly cost efficient mainframe environment, managed for over ten years in a strategic partnership with CSC Australia.
Driving down software costs
Delivering value for money to its clients requires
Allianz to streamline costs throughout the business.
One of its areas of cost advantage is in mainframe software, due to CSC running all of its client software at the same version level in a well managed environment.
The volume discounts this global software management generates provides significant savings – reducing the cost of software to Allianz by as much as 50% for some products.
Allianz also benefits from CSC’s global software factory, which rapidly turns around both product testing and customisation to the Allianz environment.
In addition, CSC’s large pool of mainframe expertise cushions Allianz from the cost of keeping current with the constant cycle of operating system upgrades, ensuring migrations are smooth and risk-free.
This resource has become particularly important in the current labour market, which has a critical shortage of mainframe engineers. The career opportunities offered by CSC’s size and broad client base help to attract and retain both graduates and experienced professionals. CSC’s above-market retention rate gives Allianz confidence that its mainframe capability will continue to be upgraded and aligned with business growth as cost efficiently and effectively as possible.
1 Best General Insurer 2006 and 2007, Australian Banking & Finance Insurance Awards.

About CSC
Computer Sciences Corporation is a leading global information technology (IT) services company. CSC’s mission is to provide customers in industry and government with solutions crafted to meet their specific challenges and enable them to profit from the advanced use of technology.
With approximately 87,000 employees, CSC provides innovative solutions for customers around the world by applying leading technologies and CSC’s own advanced capabilities. These include systems design and integration;
IT and business process outsourcing; applications software development; Web and application hosting; and management consulting. Headquartered in El Segundo,
Calif., CSC reported revenue of $14.9 billion for the 12 months ended March 30, 2007. For more information, visit the company’s web site at www.csc.com
© 2007 Computer Sciences Corporation. All rights reserved.
Computer Sciences Corporation Designed and produced by
CSC’s Australia.
Providing excellent career opportunities for transitioned staff
“ Having been in house as an operations analyst for eight and a half years, I was very disheartened when they decided to outsource IT and concerned that, once I’d transferred my knowledge to the provider, there would no longer be a role for me. That was ten years ago. I’m still with CSC, and Allianz is still one of my accounts. CSC took me straight back after maternity leave. They value my skills and offer many opportunities for a challenging and varied career.”
Sophie Ioannidis
Senior Operations Analyst and Team Leader
CSC Australia
Building a development environment to help integrate acquisitions
In 2001, Allianz bought out the failing HIH’s interest in a joint venture, requiring HIH systems to be integrated with Allianz’s infrastructure – a move that would increase mainframe capacity by 50%.
Prior to outsourcing, Allianz had run development projects side by side with its live systems on one mainframe – a risky undertaking with a single point of failure. Moreover, this particular development project required so much additional capacity it would have required Allianz to purchase another mainframe.
By contrast, the solution under CSC’s managed mainframe service was low-risk and provided the additional capacity at only incremental cost. While the rapid capacity growth was
50% of Allianz’s total processing power, it represented less than 1% of CSC’s overall managed environment and could be provided on demand.
To reduce risk, CSC built a separate mainframe with a logical partition in which to develop the new solution, converting the HIH systems in just three months. Rather than dismantling the development environment, Allianz elected to retain it, allowing the insurer to develop new products without the risk of damaging its revenuegenerating products running on the main system.
Supporting online product sales
As consumers became comfortable with buying financial products online and Allianz moved to sell insurance on the web, it needed an interface to all product systems. Rather than setting up web sales through small servers, it elected to create a web interface to its mainframe, where the products resided – taking advantage of the mainframe’s robust capacity, scalability and monitoring capabilities.
Another advantage was the energy-efficiency of the solution, since mainframes deliver much higher utilisation rates than servers. This was important to
Allianz, which in 2007 was recognized as the most sustainable general insurer in the world by the Dow
Jones Sustainability Index, and honoured as ‘Best in
Class’ for its approach to greenhouse gas emissions disclosure by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), featuring in the CDP Leadership Index for the second year running.
To support this green strategy, CSC created a web interface that is allowing Allianz to build a front end to products that reside directly on the mainframe. This complex technology change is being achieved through a partnership approach, as CSC and Allianz work together in new territory.
The resulting online management processing solution is already supporting sales of Allianz’s breakthrough life insurance product. In a market dominated by advisors and complex products, 2007 saw Allianz launch a simple alternative – up to 30% cheaper than other online life insurance. Thanks to CSC’s web interface, the new product can be purchased online in just 12 minutes.
Bringing in specialists to change mainframe architecture
Operational failure can be catastrophic in any industry, but in insurance it is also one of the risk factors considered by the Australian Prudential Regulation
Authority’s rating system. Thus, when Allianz needed to change its mainframe architecture in March 2006, it was vital that CSC took every step possible to mitigate risk.
In response, CSC engaged proven specialists in technical migrations – a team of mainframe design engineers drawn from CSC’s global ranks – to plan and oversee the project. Due to this team’s deep experience and niche expertise, the project met every milestone, seamlessly changing from one architecture to another without business interruption.
Exceeding expectations
None of these achievements would have been possible without CSC’s consistently strong service delivery performance, which met 99% of its SLAs over the 24 months to March 2007. This included online response times, application availability and mainframe availability and reliability.
“ CSC continues to be proactive and innovative without compromising day-to-day operations.”
Steve Coles
CIO, Allianz
January 2007