Enterprise S.p.A. wanted to have direct control of development and testing of its flagship IBM mainframe software solution to help it shorten the time-to-market for new releases and to make the installation process more reliable and predictable.
Enterprise S.p.A. runs a core business application on the IBM mainframe environment Pr.E.M.I.A., which manages every kind of interbank relationship, specifically in payments, trade finance, precious metals, and currency treasury. Enterprise S.p.A. maintained this software directly on the client’s mainframe environment. This has caused version control issues, with clients operating on different versions of the software, leading to different support requirements and the potential for human error. As client business requirements are becoming more sophisticated, Enterprise S.p.A. recognized the need to respond to enhancements requests and maintenance requirements more efficiently. It wanted to have direct control of the development and testing of this flagship software to help shorten the time-to-market for new releases and to make the installation process more reliable and predictable.
Marco Spuntarelli, Client Manager at Enterprise S.p.A., explains: “We looked into purchasing our own mainframe partition to run Pr.E.M.I.A., but we didn’t feel this was a cost-effective option for us and so we looked for alternatives.”
Enterprise S.p.A. is a leader in the development of technology and organization solutions dedicated to the financial services industry. It aims to optimize business processes for banks, reducing the operational running costs. Approximately 300 banks, including more than 10,000 branches, which represents 50% of the total number of banks’ branches in Italy, run Enterprise S.p.A. systems.
Following a market evaluation, the Micro Focus Enterprise solution was highlighted as a good fit for Enterprise S.p.A and as a result, this solution was chosen. With the support of the Micro Focus services team the implementation was completed within a two month timeframe allowing Enterprise S.p.A. to deploy the tools to the development teams ensuring rapid adoption and immediate productivity gains.
Enterprise Developer has brought a number of useful features. The integrated development environment in Eclipse is particularly appreciated. As each developer has their own development environment this means technicians can modify the same source code with fewer conflicts which is critical in a parallel development environment. The smart COBOL editing feature has improved developer efficiency as code syntax errors are detected and fixed automatically without having to wait for code compilation. A local CICS test environment allows the developer to test application changes in isolation without impacting other users or consume mainframe resources.
Marco Spuntarelli – CLIENT MANAGER
Enterprise S.p.A.
Enterprise Test Server provides a mainframe test execution environment which runs on Windows. This allows more cost-effective application testing. It also supports scalable functional testing and provides a demo or prototyping environment for clients.
Having an in-house development and test environment has brought Enterprise S.p.A. and its clients many benefits, as Spuntarelli explains: “The Micro Focus solution has given us more extensive reporting capabilities, which means we don’t have to rely on business analysts. The instance of DB2 on the distributed development environment is easier for us to access and we have noticed that test phases can be shortened in the new environment.”
Development productivity is improved because Enterprise S.p.A. is able to analyse the impact of changes. It can avoid issuing conflicting releases of its software, and is able to semiautomatically resolve conflicts on parallel development on the same software module.
Marco Spuntarelli – CLIENT MANAGER
Enterprise S.p.A.
