The highest building of Leeuwarden (the capital of the Dutch province of Frisia) accommodates Achmea one of the largest insurance companies in the Netherlands. To follow, a short and by no means complete, history of the company: in the year 1811 Ulbe Piers Draisma established a mutual security company named Achlum. In the eighties of the previous century Achlum expanded its services by merging with a large number of insurance companies to become Avero Verzekeringen. Not stopping here Avero fused once more in 1995 to become Achmea, a conglomerate of financial and insurance companies capable of providing just about any service required in the field of finance and insurance.

Up and until 2002 the Group operated very successfully. But, as so many, Achmea suffered a minor set back in the recession period following the 9-11 disaster in the year 2002. By submitting itself to stout cost saving measures and a reorganization the company overcame the brief decline in prosperity and is now once more sailing the high seas.

Achmea and TD/OMS
Company mergers and takeovers often lead to a tangle of automated systems. This was also the case at Achmea. As early as 1990 Avero had an iSeries installed to run an in-house developed application to manage insurance policies. By now, this most successful midrange system of the previous century, has taken over the mainframe function of two major company divisions. At present the number of iSeries's deployed within Achmea amounts to about thirty, including partitions.

At a very early stage software Change and Release management on the iSeries has been performed by Remain's TD/OMS software. Since we are curious to see to what extent TD/OMS meets the expectations of the users, we decided to travel to Leeuwarden to meet and talk about TD/OMS with Sietse Witzenburg, manager iSeries for the Frisian company. On our way to his office we had to pass some ten check points. Sietse is a phlegmatic but yet critical son of a farmer, an employee at Achmea for some thirteen years now.

How it all started
Our foremost application was the policy managing software we had developed and deployed on a System 38. We started out as a mainframe site but wanting to be cost effective we were also looking at alternatives. This is when the iSeries came into focus and in 1992 a second iSeries was brought in, dedicated for development. Pre iSeries time our programmers compiled in production, which obviously was not the best way to work. We did have change procedures, which we created ourselves, but they were far from sufficient.
To automate software management we took a look at ADM, it was our policy to first look at IBM solutions before considering a third party product. ADM was a small disaster, so we had to look elsewhere. Through a leaflet we learned about Remain. We compared the TD/OMS specifications to others, including TurnOver from SoftLanding. At that time TD/OMS was the only application to offer a distribution module. For us distribution was very important so the decision to go for TD/OMS was easily made. Above all, it was a Dutch application, always an advantage when it comes to support.
At some point in time the men from Remain appeared, first Peter Wortel, later on Wim Jongman. They both wore suits, but their attitude wasn't suit-like at all, I mean they made a non-conventional and energetic impression. The management had written the software with there own bare hands, so to say. We found this appealing, not only because we were small development unit ourselves.

The implementation of TD/OMS
"Start-up problems? Every change causes resistance. Programmers are never pleased when restriction rears its ugly head. Certainly in those days, programmers were very keen on creative approaches and freedom in their work. Now they need our assistance for every minor change introduced. The fact that TD/OMS has the look and feel of OS/400 has helped us tremendously, not so with ADM. A definite boon is also the extent in which you can customize TD/OMS to meet your needs. These two facts have greatly facilitated the process of acceptation. As far as I can remember no further support was required with the embedding of TD/OMS in our environment. From the beginning we were very satisfied with TD/OMS.
The exit programs we initially needed to make TD/OMS fit into our environment we\'re easily written and are still being used. Since then we have also created a few interfaces to integrate certain development support applications. The installation and use of TD/OMS was documented conform our standards and procedures. While writing the documentation we were assisted by an external security specialist, who by the way became well versed in this area of TD/OMS and found it a capable product to integrate security wise."

Achmea and Remain
"Post implementation, the contact with Remain \'remained\' excellent. The people there think actively with you, taking all of your problems seriously. If you called their help desk, the person on the other side would know what you were talking about. Within an hour you might find a modified piece of CL in your mailbox. Problem solved! In this respect Remain is unique".
"I have noticed that Remain has grown as an organization. Nowadays your request may take a little more than an hour to get processed. But their support is still outstanding, their commitment has not decreased at all."
In comparison to Achmea, Remain is but a small company. It remains captivating watching this small company so effortlessly doing business with us. Apparently designing and building advanced software, and taking their users seriously, pays off.

Recent developments
Sietse, "Over the years the iSeries has turned into a completely different kind of machine. I\'ve always kept my iSeries technical knowledge up-to-date. TD/OMS kept in step with iSeries advancements and proved to be upwards compatible, all the time".
We\'ve a major reorganization just behind us. During the years of economic prosperity we had all kinds of wonderful ideas, we wanted to buy new software, but it hasn\'t come that. The times when you could buy new functionality whenever you pleased are over. We\'ll have to manage with the existing software. Under such circumstances it\'s reassuring to know that TD/OMS is a stable and reliable product. Other platforms in use within Achmea aren\'t as lucky as us where it concerns software change and release management. This let\'s the i-Series shine thru and fortunately, TD/OMS easily links into our ITIL procedures."

The future

"If TD/OMS would ever to become platform-independent, that would be great. But for me, seeing is believing. If Remain would offer more consultancy, that would be great too. But we\'re more than pleased with their helpdesk and support as is. Just hassle free contacts. I haven\'t used the possibility of the PTF download yet (via the Remain extranet), neither have I visited the TD/OMS user platform. But I will probably do that in the near future.

Conclusion
The conversation is about to end. We are given a tour of the computer room and with a certain amount of pride Sietze shows us the computing facilities for which he is responsible. It\'s supporting to know that a demanding company like Achmea is totally satisfied with TD/OMS. It\'s also reassuring to know that TD/OMS is able to handle any change thrown at it and is able to cope with changes in both technical and organizational areas.
 

Jan de Zeeuw

Picture: Numidia