Activus reduces time to market and costs by licensing the
Visual Basic Upgrade Companion
This leading Independent Software Vendor, with headquarters in Bristol,
UK, managed to save about 14 man/months and obtain high quality, 100% native .NET
code by using ArtinSoft’s state-of-the-art VB to .NET tool instead of Microsoft’s
Upgrade Wizard to cost-effectively migrate its flagship Act-isure application, while
securing compliance for its customers in the international health insurance sector.
Customer Profile
Leading British ISV serving the medical insurance, protection and assistance markets
worldwide.
Business Situation
Activus wished to enjoy the technological advantages inherent to the .NET platform,by
migrating Act-isure to .NET meant .In addition it allowed the development team to
standardize on .NET development, the company’s Act-isure web services product range
already being based on the .NET framework.
Solution
Due to time constraints and the value of the complex business logic embedded in
the application, Activus chose to migrate the system to VB.NET in-house, using ArtinSoft’s
Visual Basic Upgrade Companion and one migration architect to support the internal
team.
Benefits
By using ArtinSoft’s Visual Basic Upgrade Companion, Activus was able to cut down
the number of EWIs by 45% and the total migration time by about 14 man/months, compared
to the Upgrade Wizard that ships with Visual Studio. By moving to the .NET platform,
Activus will ensure the future evolution of its application, through a faster development
environment and continued support from Microsoft.
Situation
Founded in 1992 and headquartered in the UK, Activus is a leading
worldwide supplier of application software and implementation services to the medical
insurance, protection insurance and assistance markets. Their flagship product,
Act-isure is a comprehensive processing platform for protection
insurers, with installations in the UK, Ireland, USA, Middle East, Far East, China
and Africa.
Used by insurers, managing agents, third party administrators and business process
outsourcers in several countries, this software package integrates product, client,
policy, claims, accounting and reporting modules, providing a lifetime view of all
client information, transactions and correspondence, with full multi-country and
multi-currency capabilities for both domestic and international operations.
Activus’ Act-isure is a client-server application. Technically it comprises 59 VB6
projects (885 total files and in excess of 550,000 code and design lines), It has
a database layer, supporting both Oracle and SQL Server versions 7, 2000, 2005 and
2008.
A clean interface, sophisticated functionality and the possibility to create independent
rules for each customer without programmer involvement are some of the most important
features of this application, which make it very flexible and adaptable. However,
Activus and its many customers determined that the application’s strategic direction
required it to run on the .NET platform.
Solution
Due to time constraints and the value of the complex business logic embedded in
the application, Activus didn’t favor a manual rewrite. After extensive market research
they chose to engage with ArtinSoft to assess the best option to move forward to
migrate Act-isure.
After a thorough assessment performed by ArtinSoft upon the application and Activus’
specific needs, it was decided to maintain the current application’s architecture
and move the visual controls to .NET native controls. Additionally, coding patterns
were consolidated, for example, by standardizing on Structured Error Handling (“Try..Catch”).
An ADO to ADO.NET upgrade and the conversion of Modules to Static Classes were also
contemplated as part of the solution.
Activus chose to migrate the system to VB.NET in-house, using ArtinSoft’s Visual
Basic Upgrade Companion and one Artinsoft migration architect to support the internal
team. The target language was chosen mostly because the developers responsible for
the maintenance and enhancement of the VB6 application were already familiar with
VB.NET.
Expected Benefits
Compared with the standard utility that ships with Microsoft’s Visual Studio, using
ArtinSoft’s tool considerably reduced the number of Errors Warnings and Issues;
it was estimated that the Visual Basic Upgrade Companion produces 45% less EWIs
than the Upgrade Wizard while migrating Act-Isure from VB6.0 to VB.NET. Translated
in time to fix those issues, Activus will be able to cut down the migration time
substantially from the original internal estimates
Functional Equivalence preserving all the business logic is the main goal of the
migration project, but by moving Act-isure to the .NET platform Activus expects
to ensure the future evolution of its business critical application, through a faster
development environment.
