Polaris Software Triples Developer Productivity With Microsoft

Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Customer Solution Case Study

Polaris Software Lab Triples Developer Productivity with Microsoft

Overview “Microsoft .NET and Visual Studio 2005, together Country: India with SQL Server 2005, help us deliver powerful, Industry: Information Technology scalable and affordable custom solutions quickly to Customer Profile our banking and financial services customers.” Polaris is a leading provider of “smart legacy modernization services” to leading Anandhi Krishnan, Assistant Vice President, Polaris Software Lab banks and financial institutions worldwide. Polaris seeks to improve Polaris Software Lab delivers technology solutions and services time-to-market and reduce cost and risk. to global banking, financial services, and insurance companies. Business Situation Polaris has a number of products that it developed on the Java Long development and customization cycles and scalability issues were major development platform, and that run on Oracle databases. But concerns because they were impacting development cycles were long, and customizing products for the company’s competitiveness. individual customers was difficult. Polaris wanted to quickly Solution scale up to handle exponential increases in data volumes. To Polaris ported its collections and recovery solution to Microsoft .NET- gain an edge over its competitors, Polaris had to develop cost- based technologies, using the Microsoft® effective customized solutions in a shorter time frame. The Visual Studio® 2005 development system and Microsoft SQL Server™ 2005 company turned to cutting-edge Microsoft® software and database. technologies, including Microsoft Visual Studio® 2005 and

Benefits Microsoft SQL Server™ 2005, to develop a debt collection and  Three-fold increase in developer recovery solution. Polaris increased developer productivity productivity  Highly scalable and very cost-effective three-fold and can now offer superior and scalable solutions at a solution lower cost.  Reduced time-to-market Development and Performance Facts for Situation end-of-day records processing. With the Collect .NET Polaris Software Lab provides technology number of records escalating to 2.5 million Key technologies  Microsoft Visual solutions and services to the global in some cases, the existing application was Studio 2005 banking, financial services, and insurance having trouble completing the processing  Microsoft SQL sectors. Almost 20 years of supporting run within the required time frame.” Server 2005 these sectors has helped Polaris gain deep  Microsoft .NET domain expertise. The company employs In the past, Polaris considered porting—as Framework 2.0 over 6,000 associates across 10 a test case—one of its applications from Development Microsoft Visual development centers worldwide. Polaris’s Java to Microsoft .NET connection software language C# 2005 revenues were U.S.$175 million. for connecting people, systems, and Time to develop 4.5 months devices. Polaris has been delivering Microsoft® Number of Varied; up to 13 technology–based solutions to its When Microsoft announced the release of developers customers since 1993. Over the years the Microsoft Visual Studio® 2005 Total development 60 person-months Polaris has gained extensive experience development system and Microsoft SQL effort and expertise in implementing complex Server™ 2005, Polaris decided to port one Potential data 2.5 million records systems using Microsoft technologies. of its solutions, track developer volume per day Polaris is a Microsoft Certified Partner. productivity, and compare total cost of Response time of 1 to 2.5 seconds ownership. customer Polaris provides a range of products, most information of which were developed using Java and Solution screen were running on Oracle databases. One of Polaris selected its collections and Results of testing SQL Server 2005 those products was a Web-based recovery product, Intellect-Collect, as a test at Intel labs in can process collections and recovery solution called case. Developers ported the application Bangalore, 2.5 million Intellect-Collect for the financial services from the Java development platform to the India records and industry. Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 upload an environment. The Microsoft .NET additional 10 Polaris wanted to shorten product Framework is an integral component of the million records development cycles and reduce difficulties Microsoft Windows® operating system that in in customizing a solution for a particular provides a programming model and approximately customer. runtime for Web services, Web 2.5 hours applications, and smart client applications. Anandhi Krishnan, Assistant Vice President of Polaris Software Lab, remarks, “We To develop Collect .NET, developers used found that customers wanted us to reduce the Visual Studio 2005 development the time taken to customize the solution. system and worked in the Microsoft Visual Plus, ‘time is money,’ so we had to keep C#® development tool, which is designed to the solution costs within a competitive build enterprise applications that run on the range.” .NET Framework using SQL Server 2005 as database server. Anand Mukundan, Solution Architect at Polaris Software Lab, elaborates, “Banks Collect .NET was developed in less time have only a small time window to complete than originally planned, and well within Figure 1. Screen capture of the Account/Contract Information screen.

budget. States Krishnan, “We were given As shown in Figure 1, agents can view a three months for development and two customer’s entire delinquency history, months for testing. We completed the recent payments made, and promises project in four and a half months.” broken. The solution can be easily adapted to any collection strategy and provides Collect .NET provides an all-in-one solution modules and capabilities for supervisory for improving collections and enhancing control, resource allocation, and customer relationships. By using Collect customized incentive plans. .NET, organizations can collect on multiple products and/or services and link together Collect .NET Architecture collections cases for a single customer. As shown in Figure 2, Collect .NET has a Collect .NET also helps collections agents three-tier architecture. The Web Server to make the most intelligent treatment runs on Internet Information Services (IIS) decisions based on the breadth of a version 5.0 or higher and hosts pure HTML customer’s existing relationship with the pages, Dynamic Microsoft ASP.NET-based organization. ASPX pages and Microsoft .NET- connected “code-behind files” that execute Collect .NET Delinquency based upon user request. Tracking, Follow-up Reminders, The application server layer contains all and Issue Escalation components and business logic. The business components are designed to classes, and so on. The other developers “On Collect .NET and provide deployment flexibility. They can attended two weeks of classroom training reside on the Web server or on a separate and then went straight to work, applying on the projects we’ve application server. Maintaining the their newly acquired skills on the job under ported to .NET since, business components on a separate the tutelage of senior developers. application server provides enhanced our benchmarks scalability. The database layer runs on Remarks Mukundan, “The freshman .NET repeatedly show a SQL Server 2005. developers learned [Microsoft .NET] quite fast and liked it immediately, and found that three-fold increase in Microsoft .NET Training it’s just so much easier to work in .NET and productivity for .NET Some of the developers had experience that they can complete their work much working with Microsoft .NET, so they only faster.” development.” needed to get up to speed on the new application programming interfaces (APIs), Code Savers Anandhi Krishnan, Assistant Vice President, Polaris Software Lab Developers exploited several features custom authorization scenarios available in Visual Studio 2005, SQL necessary for this product, and had the Server security layer done.” 2005, ASP.NET 2.0, and the .NET Framework 2.0, described as follows:  Partitioned Tables and Indexes. Collect .NET uses partitioned tables and  Master Pages, Themes, and index partitioning, features that are Skins. Master Pages and Themes in available in SQL Server 2005. ASP.NET 2.0 helped enable developers Partitioned tables and indexes increase to provide a consistent look and feel the performance and scalability of the across the application. By using these database when a single table contains features and skins, it is also very easy to large amounts of data. customize the application for specific customers. “With Themes and skins,  SQL Server 2005 Reporting customizing the color scheme and other Services. Collect .NET uses SQL elements of the UI is a snap,” comments Server 2005 Reporting Services to Mukundan. “We don’t have to put in generate all customer communication much effort to extend a particular look letters, statements and other reports. In and feel throughout the entire addition, the solution uses advanced application.” features of SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services to generate snapshot reports.  Localization. Collect .NET can be Collectors print these reports and take localized quite easily because all them along when they visit a customer in displayed text in the UI can be retrieved person to collect on a payment. from a resource file or a table. This localizable data can be formatted by Benefits using .NET functions that support As a test case, the Collect .NET porting globalization. project was a huge success. Polaris, by using the cutting-edge tools and data  Membership API. Collect .NET environment from Microsoft, increased extends the ASP.NET 2.0 Membership developer productivity. Polaris can go to API to implement the security shell. The market ahead of the competition and basic user authentication functionality accelerate the sales cycle with a lower- "We have seen the uses the features provided by the cost, better performing solution. Finally, TCO reduce by half Membership APIs. The authentication Polaris customers can base their mechanism extends the Membership businesses on a reliable solution that when we adopted the APIs to allow for fine-grained control performs and scales well. Microsoft platform for required by Collect .NET. “We avoided having to write code for all the default Three-fold Increase in Developer Productivity theFigure same 2. Collect delinquency .NET technical authentication and authorization Polaris carefully tracks and documents the trackingarchitecture system that mechanisms. That part comes with the effort required for every project. On the ASP.NET 2.0 Membership API,” says Collect .NET porting project, developers ran on Java and Mukundan. “We wrote code only for our were three times more productive working Oracle."

Anandhi Krishnan, Assistant Vice President, Polaris Software Lab on the Microsoft environment and Cost is a consideration for Polaris clients, development tools than on the existing and Collect .NET delivers lower total cost platform. of ownership (TCO) than previous and competing solutions. “On Collect .NET and on the projects we’ve ported to .NET since, our benchmarks “The total cost of ownership drops repeatedly show a three-fold increase in dramatically as a result of lower hardware productivity for .NET development,” says and software, costs,” remarks Krishnan. Krishnan. “But that’s just the beginning. The customization and maintenance costs are Scalable, High-Performance Solution for much lower with Microsoft.NET. Because Millions of Records productivity is high, the cost for In Collect .NET, SQL Server 2005 supports customization and time to deliver is the customer’s mission and core business considerably reduced. We have seen the by handling large amounts of data and TCO reduce by half when we adopted the transactions. Microsoft platform for the same delinquency tracking system that ran on “With the .NET based solution we have Java and Oracle.” achieved end of day processing of over 2.5 million records in two and a half hours, Polaris ran performance and scalability which is well within the bank’s downtime tests at Intel Labs Bangalore. The results window of four to six hours. Earlier we used show that with SQL Server 2005, Polaris to run into problems while processing more can process 2.5 million records and upload than 1 million records,” says Krishnan. an additional 10 million records within approximately 2.5 hours of downtime. With With SQL Server 2005, Collect .NET solves a normal 2 processor server for the the scalability problem by using SQL database and application server, Server stored procedures, partitioned Collect.NET was able to handle 200 tables, and index partitioning. transactions per minute with less than 70 percent CPU utilization and maintain the 2- Faster to Market with a Lower-Cost Solution second page response time. Server A steep increase in developer productivity hardware was a dual-processor 32-bit enables Polaris to dramatically reduce the Xeon with 2.8 Ghz SCSI-raided hard drives time required to develop—and then with 130 GB capacity and 2 GB RAM. customize—a product. “The TCO for the customers will definitely “Microsoft .NET and Visual Studio 2005, be low because Collect .NET does not together with SQL Server 2005, help us require them to buy huge, expensive deliver powerful, scalable, and affordable boxes,” says Krishnan. custom solutions to our banking and financial services customers,” says By using Themes and skins in ASP. NET Krishnan. 2.0, Polaris accelerates the sales process. For More Information “To demonstrate the product for a potential Microsoft Windows Server For more information about Microsoft customer, we can use Themes and skins to System products and services, call the Microsoft customize the look and feel so fast, it’s Microsoft Windows Server System™ is a Sales Information Center at (800) 426- unreal,” says Krishnan. “We knew this line of integrated and manageable server 9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft capability existed, but once we tried it, we software designed to reduce the complexity Canada Information Centre at (877) 568- were extremely impressed. It’s so helpful, and cost of IT. Windows Server System 2495. Customers who are deaf or hard- and we know that every customer will love enables you to spend less time and budget of-hearing can reach Microsoft text it.” on managing your systems so that you can telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) focus your resources on other priorities for 892-5234 in the United States or (905) With its success using Visual Studio 2005 you and your business. 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 and SQL Server 2005, Polaris is riding the United States and Canada, please wave of one successful project right into For more information about Windows contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. another. The company has begun Server System, go to: To access information using the World developing a branch renewal system and www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem Wide Web, go to: www.microsoft.com has already completed a Financial Need analysis module. Microsoft SQL Server 2005 For more information about Polaris Microsoft SQL Server 2005 is products and services call +91 98 8402 Thrilled with productivity improvements and comprehensive, integrated data 4853 or visit the Web site at: her team’s overall success using the management and analysis software that www.polaris.co.in Microsoft environment and development enables organizations to reliably manage tools, Krishnan concludes, “We have a mission-critical information and confidently roadmap to build a lot more banking run today’s increasingly complex business products on the .NET technology.” applications. By providing high availability, security enhancements, and embedded reporting and data analysis tools, SQL Server 2005 helps companies gain greater insight from their business information and achieve faster results for a competitive advantage. And, because it’s part of Windows Server System, SQL Server 2005 is designed to integrate seamlessly with your other server infrastructure investments.

For more information about SQL Server 2005, go to: www.microsoft.com/sqlserver

Software and Services  Technologies  Microsoft Windows Server System™ − Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 − Microsoft Internet Information Server − Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 5.0 − Microsoft Visual C# Microsoft SQL Server 2005 © 2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case − study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT  Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Microsoft, Visual C#, Visual Studio, Windows, and Windows Server System are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

Document published October 2005 Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 is the world’s most popular development environment for designing, developing, and testing next- generation Windows-based solutions and Web applications and services. By improving the development experience for Windows, the Web, mobile devices, and Microsoft Office, Visual Studio 2005 helps organizations deliver a variety of solutions more productively than ever before. Visual Studio Team System expands the product line with new software tools that enable greater communication and collaboration throughout the development life cycle. With Visual Studio 2005, businesses can deliver modern service-oriented solutions more efficiently.

For more information on Visual Studio 2005, go to: msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio

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