top of page
MOST Technologies

Bank Hapoalim – Re-hosting pension fund systems - Case Study

Updated: May 30, 2021



(February 2021)


Bank Hapoalim had decided to sell its Provident Funds system and its entire operation to Malam-Team, one of the largest IT companies in Israel.

Residing on mainframe and open system environments, the system consists of a complex set of financial applications serving more than 10 different investment companies and millions of customers.


Based on its long history of proven track record and its capability in using automated tools MOST was nominated to handle the conversion, migration, and integration of the systems.

The objective of the project was to re-host the existing system using "lift & shift" approach and integrate all interfaces and APIs to the new environment. The databases had to be migrated from Bank Hapoalim while making minimal changes to the software and ensuring continued business stability to the customers.





Technologies

The systems required the implementation of a mixture of technologies:

  • Approximately 20 systems coded in COBOL, Java, C# .NET, Cognos, Datastage and more.

  • DB2 mainframe, VSAM, SQL Server, Microsoft Reporting Services, DB2 on an open platform, .Net, & Cache databases

  • Infrastructure: IBM Websphere, NDM, Windows Servers, VMware, F5, Citrix, Datastage and more.

  • Thousands of end-users across more than 15 different financial companies



Major challenges of the project

This high-profile project carried a unique challenge since the system was completely interwoven with the bank's internal systems and used many of the bank's proprietary tools and utilities that could not be moved over. These tools and utilities had to be redeveloped and had to yield the same results as in the bank.

Other challenges were:

  • Extracting the software and infrastructure from the existing intricate bank infrastructure

  • Handling bank-wide systems that supported funds along with other bank functionality

  • Moving the existing systems to platforms that are technologically different from those of the bank

  • Changing the entire identification management infrastructure

  • Upgrading the systems to more advanced versions of the software

  • Installing a system that worked with multiple IT disciplines

  • A “big- bang” go-live for 2700 users and trillions of dollars in portfolio

  • Real-time Interfaces with data providers, government institutes, clearing houses and banks


Implementation

As indicated above MOST's approach for implementation was to perform a "lift & shift" operation wherever possible. Other components which could not be moved over had to be developed or replaced by various tools. Other activities included software versions upgrades (e.g. Java and COBOL were upgraded to the latest versions) and changes to business processes because the system was taken out from the bank's system to be executed by a non-financial organization.

MOST's OnTarget tool suite was used to perform automated adaption of COBOL code and JCL where relevant.

The project completed successfully in two years.


Comentários


bottom of page