Delta Lloyd Deutschland

Story Details

Delta Lloyd Deutschland specializes in life insurance. As a subsidiary of Aviva, one of the biggest players in the European insurance market, it has impressive backing. With a rapidly expanding customer base, the company is aiming to become one of the leading providers for financial services in Germany, offering customers a one-stop-shop not just for insurance, but for all their financial needs.

This diversification takes a huge amount of planning - not least because the volume and variety of customer documentation dealt with by employees are increasing fast. Personnel at all levels need access to different types of documents, but the company is also obliged to maintain the confidentiality and security of customer information, particularly when sharing documents with partners. It needed to replace its IT systems to keep pace with the change.

Delta Lloyd Deutschland decided to deploy a robust identity management system, so that IT personnel could assign permissions to individuals quickly and easily, with a few simple commands. In this way, employees and partners would gain federated access to documents, applications, and services, and the company would meet its regulatory requirements.

The company's IT team tested software from several suppliers, looking for a reliable suite of products with comprehensive support services. Having recently replaced the company's IBM mainframe environment with more efficient Intel-based IBM servers, the team was also looking for products that would integrate easily with the new hardware.

After a rigorous evaluation process, including a comprehensive proof-of-concept, the team at Delta Lloyd Deutschland decided that Sun software was the best option on the market. Dr. Peter Muth, head of IT Solutions at Delta Lloyd Deutschland, says, "Alongside the technical quality of the products, the support from Sun was impressive. Its professional consultants were always on hand during the proof-of-concept phase."

Having rolled out Intel-based IBM servers running the Red Hat Linux operating system, the company deployed a suite of Sun products, including:

• Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server, which controls the distribution of applications centrally.
• Sun Java System Message Queue, to connect critical line-of-business applications.
• Sun Integrated Load Balancer, to monitor redundant servers and ensure high availability in the application infrastructure.

Within this environment, the team at Delta Lloyd Deutschland then rolled out an identity management solution consisting of:

• Sun Identity Manager 7.1.1, which helps IT professionals to provision rights accurately and quickly.
• Sun OpenSSO Enterprise (formerly Sun Java System Access Manager), an integrated solution that handles access management, federation, and secure Web services.
• Sun Java System Directory Server Enterprise Edition

Managers at the company use the Sun products to carry out accurate rights provisioning. Most importantly, they use Sun Identity Manager to make sure employees have appropriate permissions for a new administrative system for residual debt. In the future, the same Sun solution will also be used for provisioning access to the administration system for life-insurance policies.

Another major advantage of using Sun OpenSSO Enterprise is that administrators can manage employee records centrally, using a single, consolidated view of an individual's information. They can also set up workflows so that changes made on one part of the network are automatically mirrored across the whole IT infrastructure. Using the Sun solution saves administrative time and allows managers to work on higher-value, strategic projects. Users save time, too, because they now have a single sign-on that gives them access to all their applications and services.

The solution also makes legal compliance processes more efficient. Because the company handles sensitive information, it has to be ready to report at any time on the access rights assigned to its employees. Previously, administrators had to collate this information manually, but with the new system an individual's access rights can be automatically consolidated in a single, centralized view.

The company is also using the Sun technologies to improve response times for one of its most important systems: the partner database that stores customer information. The IT team replaced the old host-based database with a newly developed application using Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server, the Sun Java System Message Queue, and Sun OpenSSO Enterpise. With the new system, the team has slashed the time it takes to query the database. "Response times for the partner database are now generally less than a second, and even large search queries are completed within 10 seconds. These figures are a real improvement." says Muth.

Delta Lloyd Deutschland plans to connect further systems, such as its SAP solution, to Sun Identity Manager and Sun OpenSSO Enterprise. "We'll be integrating collection, disbursement, and provision administration soon," says Muth.

Licensing for the Sun software is structured according to the number of staff employed at the company, meaning that Delta Lloyd Deutschland is able to confidently forecast license and maintenance costs several years in advance, even if it makes changes to its IT infrastructure. "The Sun Microsystems license model is very clear, which appeals to us because it makes costs predictable," says Muth.