Customer Success Story Visual COBOL for Eclipse COBOL Server

Dexia Crediop Crediop and Visual COBOL unlock business application value delivering 60% performance improvement while halving time to market.

Overview in our portfolio, it’s quite complex and, above Dexia Crediop S.p.A. is an Italian special- all, it is of critical importance as the conse- ized in financing public infrastructure projects. quences of non-compliance are far-stretching The bank is closely aligned with and regulated and could include financial sanctions and even by Banca d’Italia, Italy’s , and the operational suspension, so business continuity (ECB) which maintains is of vital importance to us. However, our current price stability within the Eurozone. IT strategy is moving away from the mainframe and we looked to consolidate our IT systems At a Glance Challenge onto a more cost-effective platform. We wanted To comply with banking and government insti- to innovate while minimizing any risk to our ex- Industry tutions, (ECB and Banca d’Italia requirements isting business operations.” Financial Services among others) Dexia Crediop operates a set Location of statutory reporting applications in support In order to achieve business innovation and cost Italy of operational and financial control. This appli- reduction, Dexia Crediop initially looked at re­ writ­ing its mainframe application but soon found cation is mainframe-based and was developed Challenge in-house using COBOL in the mid 2000s. Its this was a high risk strategy which came with a big price tag and a two year project time scale. Move a business-critical application from the daily batch operation reports on any bank ac- mainframe onto a more cost-effective Windows tions which warrant further investigation. platform. Dexia Crediop wanted to innovate while Solution minimizing any risk to its business. Marco Pavonio, IT Manager at Dexia Crediop, As COBOL skills were already available in- explains the importance of the application: house, and business continuity was the main Solution “Although this is just one of the applications driver, it made sense to Dexia Crediop to reuse Visual COBOL for Eclipse and COBOL Server were the existing business logic already invested in deployed to move the application to a Windows the application. A market evaluation identified Server platform, realizing immediate cost savings. ® Micro Focus Visual COBOL, as Pavonio com- Results “Our IT strategy was aimed at ments: “Micro Focus helped us set up a test- + 60% performance improvement system consolidation and cost ing phase in which we ran parallel operations + 18 month ROI achievement rationalization. We saw clear value on our mainframe and Windows environments. + Full reuse of business intelligence in our existing assets and skills and The service we received was outstanding and it + Halved the time to market Micro Focus enabled us to leverage really helped simplify the application re-hosting project for us. these while minimizing any risk to the business.” We knew Micro Focus Visual COBOL had dealt with similar situations and were confident that MARCO PAVONIO it could help us too. We had weekly check- IT Manager points to make sure the new environment was Dexia Crediop performing as it should and we established “With Visual COBOL we could perform all the tests required using one set of integrated tools and after just one year we were able to decommission the mainframe and run our core business application on our desired Windows environment, without any interruption to the business.”

MARCO PAVONIO IT Manager Dexia Crediop

www.microfocus.com standards against which we tested the re- developer interface with the user-friendly Micro hosted application. With Visual COBOL we Focus development tools. could perform all the tests required using one set of integrated tools and after just one year Dexia Crediop was able to leverage 10 year old Micro Focus we were able to decommission the mainframe intellectual property, which is vitally important UK Headquarters and run our core business applications on our as the application contains the international United Kingdom desired Windows environment, without any in- regulatory framework for (Basel III) +44 (0) 1635 565200 terruption to the business.” which European banking institutions need to U.S. Headquarters comply with. Rockville, Maryland Dexia Crediop moved from a terminal emulator- 301 838 5000 based editor to an Eclipse-based editor which Pavonio on the project: “Our IT strategy was 877 772 4450 offered great usability benefits. Debugging aimed at system and technology consolidation can be done much more efficiently in the new and cost rationalization. We saw clear value in Additional contact information and office locations: www.microfocus.com environment. our existing assets and skills and Micro Focus enabled us to leverage these while minimiz- Results ing any risk to the business. We have realized Following a successful move to Windows, Dexia a significant OPEX reduction and will achieve Crediop has recorded a 60% improved applica- full ROI on the project within 18 months. We tion performance and much enhanced usabil- are very pleased with the service received from ity as it took the opportunity to modernize the Micro Focus and look forward to the future.”

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