CASE STUDY
Building a bridge to a modern data
Industry
ƒƒ Finance & Insurance
Solution
ƒƒ Data Management for
Business Intelligence and
Reporting with Talend
Enterprise Data Quality
Key Facts
ƒƒ Basis for policy snapshot
ƒƒ Faster and more flexible
reporting
ƒƒ Migration from mainframe
to Oracle
ƒƒ Easier Error Handling
The Talend technology is
flexible and easy to use. This
has helped us a great deal
with this migration project.
Our Talend-based data
management platform has
built a bridge between the
old mainframe landscape
and a modern IT architecture.
Marko Mahler,
Application developer in the
IT quality assurance and
standards department at
MÜNCHENER VEREIN
architecture for faster, more flexible
reporting
Talend Enterprise Data Quality at MÜNCHENER VEREIN
The MÜNCHENER VEREIN mutual insurance company was founded in 1922 to secure favorable
insurance coverage for the skilled trade and craft sectors in Germany. MÜNCHENER VEREIN manages
approximately 650,000 premiums, offering tailored insurance solutions to customers of all ages.
Strategic target groups include skilled tradespeople and craftspeople, those over fifty years of age,
public servants and members of associations as well as individuals covered by Germany’s state-run
health insurance program. Today, the medium-sized insurer employs 750 back office and 350 field
staff. It also collaborates with 5,000 brokers. In 2013, the organization collected premium income in the
amount of EUR 679 million. Capital investments totaled around EUR 5.6 billion.
The challenge
Today, insurance is a data-driven business. To make sound decisions, calculate risk and evaluate
promotional measures implemented to date, providers need real-time access to precise data about
their insurance portfolios.
MÜNCHENER VEREIN’s statistics solution had evolved over decades and was based on a SESAM
database running on a Fujitsu BS/2000 mainframe with an OSD operating system. The database
contains all insured data and an overview of all policy agreements. To generate statistics, the company
deployed an in-house solution that used COBOL programs to transfer data from the SESAM database to
a statistics system known as GSS (General Statistic System). At a technical level, the COBOL programs
generated readable interface files which were then loaded to the GSS database, also located on the
mainframe, using GSS utility programs. The data was then read out by other GSS programs and made
available as text files. These files were then distributed to client/server systems via file transfer where
they could be processed further with other programs such as Excel. This was the only way of generating
reports with accompanying diagrams for use across the company.
“It was a complicated and inflexible process, further compounded by the fact that we couldn’t use new
technologies to access GSS data on the host,” recalls Marko Mahler, application developer in the IT
quality assurance and standards department. “We wanted faster, more flexible reporting capabilities
to enable our IT customers to respond more rapidly and effectively. To accomplish that, we decided to
port our statistics database to a relational Oracle system that we could use to select individual tables
with SQL.”
Once the company started moving its statistics solution to Oracle, it
decided to expand the project and migrate its policy snapshot to a web
application. The policy snapshot is used by MÜNCHENER VEREIN field
staff to view and manage their contract portfolios. Support had expired
for the software that the company had been using, and it did not run on
computers with Microsoft Windows 8. Additionally, the company wanted
to migrate the underlying database from SESAM to Oracle. “The problem
here was that the database for the policy snapshot was bigger than the
statistics database. This meant we couldn’t build on the results of the
first project for this sub-project,” explains Marko Mahler. “In hindsight,
it would have been better to migrate the policy snapshot first. As it
was, we had to migrate a lot of data from the central database to two
databases and ensure that the data was consistent.”
The Talend solution
Marko Mahler and his development team needed a tool for the statistics
project that would deliver data in different formats to SAP Business
Objects to create business intelligence reports. They were looking for
a tool that could initially source data from the SESAM database on
the mainframe but was also capable of pulling data from the Oracle
database further down the line. “We looked at a number of different
solutions. However, Talend was the only software that fit the bill,”
adds Marko Mahler. “Fujitsu-Siemens only offers JDBC interfaces for
its mainframes and Talend was the only data integration solution that
came with a built-in JDBC connector”.
company also plans to provide independent brokers with access to the
system. At the same time, the underlying database will also be used
as a platform for new applications such as a company-wide customer
relationship management (CRM) solution. MÜNCHENER VEREIN can now
gradually migrate its IT infrastructure from a decades-old mainframe
platform to a modern client/server infrastructure, and reports can be
created faster to provide more up-to-date, accurate insights.
Additionally, the company has been able to identify and correct
numerous programming errors in the old database. Before, the
mainframe’s BeanConnect interface only created 80-character error
messages. Now, Talend provides meaningful information when errors
occur during a job. This enables developers to search for the cause of
an error in the corresponding Java code for every job and immediately
eliminate it. The software also comes with a debug mode for errors
that are not as easy to identify. The IT team can define points at which
the program should stop and make any necessary changes directly to
the code. External management solutions can also be used as Talend
creates every ETL job as an individual Java program. “The Talend
technology is flexible and easy to use. This has helped us a great deal
with this migration project. Our Talend-based data management
platform has built a bridge between the old mainframe landscape and a
modern IT architecture,” concludes Marko Mahler.

MÜNCHENER VEREIN chose Talend Enterprise Data Quality. In the first

step of the project, the development team focused on extracting data
from Oracle for the statistics solution, although the SESAM database
was still the main data source. With Talend, ETL jobs can be created
efficiently - defined components can be easily connected using Talend’s
graphical user interface (GUI). If an ETL job has to be changed at a
later date, for example when the company starts sourcing data from
the Oracle database, the team only has to replace the corresponding
component. The software then generates Java code from the graphical
jobs. Every ETL job corresponds to a Java program. This was a major
advantage for the 13-strong IT team as it already has a wealth of
experience working with Java.

Benefits
Thanks to Talend software, field staff can now log on to the insurance
company’s website to easily manage their customer details, rapidly
access information and identify new business opportunities. The

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