Italian Social Security Company Implements New Technology to Help Operations

Microsoft .NET Customer Solution Case Study

Overview “…[T]he .NET Framework…allows us to reuse our Country or Region: Italy existing COBOL applications in their native format. Industry: Public Sector It also greatly simplifies development tasks for our Customer Profile internal programmers….” Istituto Nazionale Previdenza Sociale (INPS) is the Italian institute for Social Dionigi Spadaccia, Central Director of IT and Telecommunications Systems, INPS Security. It provides services to 40 million citizens, including insured workers, Istituto Nazionale Previdenza Sociale (INPS), Italy’s Institute for pensioners, and registered companies. Social Security, provides a range of services such as pensions Business Situation and support for people with low incomes. To administer these, INPS previously operated an ageing IT environment with IBM AS400 Servers the organisation historically worked with a complex, highly running applications in COBOL. This was distributed IT infrastructure. It also operated ageing software difficult and costly to maintain and could not integrate new, feature-rich IT applications that were increasingly difficult to support and adapt services. to meet changing legal requirements. To address these issues,

Solution INPS deployed a new, flexible, Web-based computing

INPS deployed a new IT infrastructure architecture based on the Microsoft® .NET Framework. This based on the Microsoft® .NET Framework and the Microsoft Windows development environment allows existing software functionality Server™ 2003 operating system. to be migrated to the Web-based infrastructure effectively.

Benefits Development work required to update applications is now much  Reduced operational costs more efficient. In addition, the system supports enhanced  Streamlined software development and maintenance collaboration among operational divisions, as well as the  Open architecture reduces extension of services to citizens online. dependence on IT vendors  Fast, effective migration  Enhanced collaboration across the organisation Situation processes and IT infrastructure. Istituto Nazionale Previdenza Sociale Historically, it administered its services (INPS) is the Italian Institute for Social using applications running on 216 Security. It is the largest social insurance geographically distributed IBM AS/400 and welfare body in Italy, and one of the servers. In recent years, this server most important in Europe. Headquartered infrastructure was virtualised and in Rome, the organisation operates more consolidated on 10 centralised IBM iSeries than 550 branch offices across the country. 840 machines to increase manageability. It employs 33,000 people and has a budget of €400 billion (U.S.$470 billion), second While the consolidation of the IBM AS/400 only to the country’s national budget. infrastructure, which ran on the OS/400 4.3 operating system, delivered some As a critical component of the Italian management benefits, INPS still worked welfare system, INPS offers a broad and with ageing applications written in the diverse portfolio of services. These include COBOL programming language and a mix social security payments for elderly people of the Microsoft® Windows® 95 and and people with disabilities, pensions under Microsoft Windows NT® operating systems international agreements for work abroad, on the desktop. Some operational and support for surviving spouses. The applications were 25 years old, and institute also manages services that protect increasingly difficult to support and workers throughout their lives, including manage. In addition, the organisation redundancy pay, severance pay, remained dependent on a single unemployment benefits, sickness benefits, technology vendor, and it was difficult to and maternity payments. It also provides integrate new application functionality into support for citizens with low incomes and the existing architecture. large families. To increase the manageability and In addition to these services, INPS performance of administrative systems, monitors the world of employment and INPS decided to deploy a new, reliable, ensures that social security and insurance and flexible server infrastructure. In laws are respected. This guarantees fair addition, it wanted to integrate its competition among companies and helps to architecture with the Web, while reducing uphold workers’ rights. costs, simplifying processes, and enhancing productivity. Another key goal INPS pays 17 million pensions and insures was to streamline software development 21 million people across 1.6 million and maintenance, while preserving and registered companies. As such, it provides reusing as much existing application code social security services for almost all as possible. private sector employees and the majority of self-employed people in Italy. Solution After deciding to upgrade its IT Because of the scale of the organisation, infrastructure, INPS began to study the INPS works with complex business potential impact of new technologies on its critical activities. To ensure that the most Windows Server System™ integrated appropriate technology was selected, the server software. The migration, which is the organisation conducted an open bid largest ever to be carried out in Europe, process supported by in-depth evaluations covers 300 applications used by more than of available solutions. 20,000 employees. It was supported by leading technology partner Accenture, Dionigi Spadaccia, Central Director of IT which was responsible for project and Telecommunications Systems, INPS, management, documentation, and testing. says, “Before making up our minds which At the same time INPS received support technology to deploy, we ran a series of in- from Microsoft in the areas of product depth tests, followed by comprehensive support and architecture design. internal evaluations. After completing this process, we discovered that the The new solution serves almost 40 million Microsoft .NET Framework was capable of people, including insured workers, meeting all our requirements.” pensioners, and registered companies. It “This was an ambitious stores two terabytes of data and “andBefore complex making project up our The selection of the .NET Framework, an incorporates 12.5 million lines of code, integral component of Windows that primarily written in COBOL.NET, Microsoft mindsthat required which the provides a programming model and ASP.NET, and Microsoft Visual C#®. technologymigration of to enormous deploy, runtime for Web services, Web applications, and smart client applications, Alessandro Rossi, Manager for the INPS wedata ran volumes a series in ofjust in- 21 was largely due to its open-standards- Migration, Accenture Senior Executive, depthmonths. tests, Throughout followed based compatibility with the Web and with says, “This was an ambitious and complex third-party systems and applications. project that required the migration of bythe comprehensive migration, which Spadaccia says, “We operate a diverse IT enormous data volumes in just 21 months. internalwas completed evaluations." on infrastructure where different systems and Throughout the migration, which was applications have always co-existed. We completed on schedule, we were able to Dionigischedule, Spadaccia, weCentral were Director of IT want to be vendor independent and deploy minimise disruption to day-to-day ableand Telecommunications to minimise Systems, INPS the most appropriate technologies on a operations. This was largely due to the case-by-case basis. The Microsoft platform commitment of INPS staff, the quality of disruption to day-to- naturally supports this strategic policy by Microsoft software, and our extensive day operations." offering high levels of integration using experience of handling large-scale Web services. For example, we even have migrations.” Alessandro Rossi, Manager for the INPS the .NET Framework and Java-based systems running alongside each other, The new solution is supported by a server greatly simplifying IT management and farm located at INPS headquarters in streamlining our operations.” Rome. This integrates Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000 with the Internet using During 2004 and 2005, INPS migrated its Microsoft Host Integration Server 2004, IBM AS/400 architecture to the Microsoft which INPS deployed as an early-adopter. .NET Framework and the Microsoft As a result, legacy systems have been Windows Server™ 2003 operating system, smoothly integrated with the new Web- which is the foundation of Microsoft based architecture elements. SQL Server 2000 and Host Integration Server 2004 are technology solution had to support part of Windows Server System. development in a number of programming languages. The .NET Framework allowed During the project, all IBM AS/400 servers INPS developers to reuse existing COBOL were migrated to new IBM xSeries applications in their native format. It machines. Applications, mostly written in achieves this by managing diverse COBOL, were migrated to the.NET languages centrally in the Common Framework. Language Runtime (CLR), which acts as an abstraction layer between the high-level The new IT infrastructure comprises: language and a range of underlying  IBM xSeries servers powered by Intel infrastructure components. Xeon and Itanium 2 processors.  Seven Web application servers running Spadaccia says, “Competing solutions Windows Server 2003. impose a complex and time-consuming  Four database servers running Windows approach, requiring existing application Server 2003 and SQL Server 2000 (64- code to be modified before it is migrated. bit). By contrast, the .NET Framework provides  Two servers running Host Integration support for multiple programming Server 2004 and Windows Server 2003. languages and allows us to reuse our  Two batch servers running Windows existing COBOL applications in their native Server 2003. format. It also greatly simplifies development tasks for our internal programmers, who are largely COBOL experts. Support for multiple programming The main COBOL social security languages has greatly reduced migration application used by all INPS employees times and costs.” and agencies has now been migrated to the new Web-based architecture. While the To test the multi-language capabilities of .NET Framework allows all business logic the .NET Framework, INPS initially to remain unchanged in COBOL, users migrated applications used for managing now access the application using Microsoft employer-coordinated freelance work ASP.NET Web pages. Because the contracts and software used in the legal COBOL.NET programming language is disputes department. Both were large and closely integrated with the Microsoft Visual complex applications that incorporate code Studio® .NET 2003 development system, in a number of programming languages, the migration to the Web-based including Java. Using the .NET Framework, architecture was fast and cost-effective. they were migrated quickly and easily to the new Web-based architecture. Benefits Support for Development in Spadaccia says, “Because of the multi- Multiple Programming Languages language capabilities of the .NET Because of the diversity of the system and Framework, and the commitment of more application landscape at INPS, the new than 160 specialists from Accenture, we have now migrated more than 10 per cent to our systems were much slower and of our applications to the new system.” more expensive to deploy.”

Extended E-Government Services More Efficient IT Infrastructure and Enhanced Collaboration Delivers Significant Financial between Operational Divisions Savings The new architecture supports the The new technology has delivered development of new Internet services at significant cost savings for INPS. These INPS. The ability to extend services that largely derive from the elimination of rental are already delivered to citizens online was payments for IBM AS/400 machines, which a key driver for the project from day one. In previously weighed heavily on the IT addition, extension of activities to the online budget. environment allows increased collaboration with operational divisions across the Rossi says, “When you compare current organisation and increases productivity as infrastructure expenses to the previous “Programming is more a result. INPS environment, the .NET Framework is efficient using the .NET much more cost-effective. Centralisation Spadaccia says, “The new Web-based has allowed the organisation to greatly Framework. As a system, and the non-proprietary systems simplify its systems and ongoing result, we can react that support it, offer new levels of management requirements and to make cooperation between administrative the most of its existing IT resources quickly to changes in divisions. By using this kind of relational nationwide. As a result, it has improved the law that result from system that requires no interfacing productivity and profitability across the between different standards, we are all board.” parliamentary working together more effectively and decisions. We can also serving citizens better.” Return on investment (ROI) from additional benefits, such as ease of development, has make alterations to Rapid Development Enhances improved security and increased end-user help us meet citizens’ Productivity productivity. While the savings related to The .NET Framework helps programmers these benefits are more difficult to quantify, requirements as they develop and migrate applications quickly they contribute significantly to increased continue to evolve.” and effectively. In particular, pre-built code operational efficiency across the libraries provided with the .NET Framework organisation. Dionigi Spadaccia, Central Director of IT and Visual Studio .NET support enhanced and Telecommunications Systems, INPS productivity and ensure that programming Simplified Business Processes meets the highest quality standards. Alongside Continuity in Working Spadaccia says, “Programming is more Practices efficient using the .NET Framework. As a The migration to the .NET Framework is result, we can react quickly to changes in supporting a major rationalisation and the law that result from parliamentary simplification of internal processes at INPS. decisions. We can also make alterations to Spadaccia says, “To achieve more efficient help us meet citizens’ requirements as they processes internally, employees are continue to evolve. Previously, all changes required to make only minor changes to the For More Information way they work. Wherever possible, we Microsoft .NET For more information about Microsoft maintain existing navigation between Microsoft .NET is software that connects products and services, call the Microsoft screens, allowing internal users to work people, information, systems, and devices Sales Information Center at (800) 426- effectively throughout the project.” through the use of Web services. Web 9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft services are a combination of protocols that Canada Information Centre at (877) 568- enable computers to work together by 2495. Customers who are deaf or hard- exchanging messages. Web services are of-hearing can reach Microsoft text based on the standard protocols of XML, telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) SOAP, and WSDL, which allow them to 892-5234 in the United States or (905) interoperate across platforms and 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 programming languages. United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. .NET is integrated across Microsoft To access information using the World products and services, providing the ability Wide Web, go to: to quickly build, deploy, manage, and use www.microsoft.com connected, secure solutions with Web services. These solutions provide agile For more information about Accenture business integration and the promise of products and services, visit the Web site information anytime, anywhere, on any at: device. www.accenture.com For more information about Microsoft .NET For more information about Istituto and Web services, please visit these Web Nazionale Previdenza Sociale (INPS) sites: products and services, visit the Web site www.microsoft.com/net at: msdn.microsoft.com/webservices www.inps.it

Software and Services  Technologies  Products − Microsoft ASP.NET − Microsoft Host Integration Server − Microsoft .NET Framework 2004 − Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Hardware − Microsoft Visual C#  IBM xSeries servers − Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 © 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT − Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Partner MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Microsoft, MSDN, Visual C#, Visual Enterprise Edition − Accenture Studio, Windows, Windows NT, Windows Server, 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 February 2006 Microsoft .NET Framework The Microsoft .NET Framework is an integral Windows component for building and running the next generation of applications and XML-based Web services.

For more information about the .NET Framework, go to: msdn.microsoft.com/netframework