Legacy Banking Application Transformation
Industry
Banking
Customer
Our customer is a leading German bank that serves clients worldwide with special focus on Germany and Northern and Eastern Europe. As an international commercial institution, the bank has branches in all major financial and trading centers, including London, Singapore, and New York. It has also numerous representative and service offices and a network of more than 1,500 correspondent banks.
The bank provides a wide range of financial services to individual, corporate, and institutional clients, as well as to the public sector. The main areas of specialization are investment, agricultural and real estate banking, corporate finance, ship and aircraft financing, and private banking.
Project Overview
The project was designed to replace a legacy OS/2 banking application with a new multilayer browser–based solution. Intended for the credit department of our customer, this application captures and stores information about clients, loans, loan guaranties, and mortgages. It also generates more than 250 types of documents both for bank clients and the internal use.
The new system had to provide the same functionality as the legacy application. Another requirement was that the legacy Himalaya–based set of tools and libraries be used for the implementation of Java server applications (J2EE).
Project Execution
IBA implemented the project in close cooperation with the customer. The IBA responsibility was:
- System analysis
- Application design
- Application construction
- Unit, functional and system testing
- Quality assurance
- Warranty support.
Consequently, the IBA team was comprised of a Project Manager, three System Analysts, three Architects, six Java Developers, four Testers, and a Technical Writer.
The project involved a significant rewrite of the core system. The development was done in Minsk, Belarus, with short on–site workshops in Germany. All project–related documents were stored in a Lotus Domino / Notes database accessible to stakeholders via browser.
Project Results
The customer received a high quality application that incorporated the latest technologies. Retaining all features of the legacy application, the new solution provided enhanced functionality such as visual interface for loan operations, graphic navigation for record selections, tree hierarchical structure, and context help. The new application enabled smooth integration with MS Word and Adobe Acrobat Reader/PDF. In addition to being compliant with the legacy database, it allowed for the simultaneous use of this database by the new and legacy applications. The new application supports more than 3,000 concurrent users.
The customer was able to reduce the development costs while maintaining high quality. All deliverables were completed on schedule and exceeded quality requirements specified by the customer.
According to Dr. Axel Konrad, OE Leiter Software Engineering of NORD/IT — NORD/LB Informationstechnologie GmbH, the system received a very good feedback from its users after four months in production on the customer site: “The application is stable, performance is good and — what is also very important — the end–users like to work with the application. So after all, for you and your team together with us we can summarize: "Well done!"
