Processing business throughout the enterprise has to be fast andit has to be secure. Finding the right software solution toaccomplish those twin goals isn't always easy, but it helps if youhave an established relationship with a software provider.

That's the situation in which personal lines insurer California Casualty found itself, according to senior networkanalyst Ruben Santiago. The carrier had been using another solutionto execute the various batch processing tasks involved with itsdata transactions, but as users sought more automation, the carrierturned to another business partner, Advanced Systems Concepts and itsActiveBatch software.

As Santiago began managing thebatch processing he learned that in order to use the carrier'scurrent version of ActiveBatch software–version four–users had tohave access to the console server. Also, to run any jobs the usershad to have the local admin account. Both created securityrisks

The earlier version of ActiveBatch did not have a Web interface.From past experience, Santiago knew a system offering a Webinterface would be easier to manage from a security standpoint.

Santiago also was receiving requests from other groups in theenterprise to expand beyond the normal batch processing jobs thatwere written. Prior to the upgrade, such automation meant havingone of the application people write the job and test it for theuser.

When California Casualty was presented with the opportunity toupgrade to version seven of the ActiveBatch software, Santiagobelieves the decision was easy.

“We wanted to completely do away with users having free range onthe server and we had to retrain them to write consistent batchjobs using the ActiveBatch interface,” he says. “They were nolonger allowed to write their own batch jobs individually; they hadto use the Web interface.”

That solved the carrier's security issues, explains Santiago.“You specify the permissions you want to give certain users,” hesays. “We were able to do away with a third product we were usingto send out secured communication. [ActiveBatch version seven] hasa huge script library and encryption is built into it.”

Making the changes wasn't easy, according to Santiago. Analystshad to rewrite every job because the carrier was doing away withindividual batch jobs and using ActiveBatch's built-ininterface.

“Most of the jobs involved copying and pasting the existingscript into the ActiveBatch interface,” says Santiago. “Because wewanted to better organize the server structure, certain things hadto be changed like file locations and folder locations. We had tomodify each individual job. I'm still working on some of thecomplex files.”

As for the business users, Santiago and his team had to do asale's job.

“When you have full admin rights on a server, [users] arehesitant to go to limited access, but once they saw they couldaccomplish everything they needed to do they embraced the change,”he says. “They've followed the user guides and developed their ownprocesses and workflows. [Users] can actually see how each job isworking. They can go to each job to figure out problems.”

Santiago points out the ActiveBatch software provides a nicecomplement to the claims processing system California Casualtyinvested in last year.

“We are utilizing ActiveBatch to move claims information fromthe mainframe to the server-based claims system,” he says. “It hasto be run ad hoc, but it rarely fails and even then it's usually anetwork issue.”

The way the carrier operated in the past had to be changed,Santiago believes.

“From the server side, if you give users full access to serversthey are going to do anything they want,” he says. “By moving theusers to ActiveBatch, we have a consistent structure on the serverand we were able to maintain what we wanted on the server withoutletting non-administrators get in there. They've exceeded how theycan do things with automated processing, including sending andreceiving payroll information.”

Security issues have to be a concern when processing businessand that issue has been resolved, according to Santiago.

“The new version enabled us to properly secure communication andthat information is encrypted now and handled properly byActiveBatch,” says Santiago.