The Customer, a market leading multinational bank (referenced further as Group) is investing in a modernisation programme for its Invoice Finance Division (referenced further as IF). The aim of this project is to build a high performance, strategic platform that can process large numbers of both in and outbound payment transactions, in batch, on a daily basis. The project will deliver a solution that is capable of acting as the primary method of communicating payment transactions - with the IF and overall Group. This move will enable the decommissioning of the bank’s legacy payment systems.
The Objective
The primary objective of the project is to deliver a strategic platform within IF to support the high speed, high volume, batch processing of inbound and outbound payment transactions to and from Group, This will enable faster payments, and introduce modern web screens used daily by payments operators.
Previously the undocumented semi-automated legacy solution relied on regular manual adjustments from a soon to be retired iSeries Developer. The new solution had to be developed to minimize the amount of rework required from any future changes in messaging formats or functionality with Group.
The secondary objective of the project includes the establishment of Java on the AS400 platform. This strategic move will allow the organization to not only move away from the locked in vendor support of legacy systems but also minimize the risks of relying on existing staff with expertise in legacy programming.
By establishing a fresh pool of internal and external resources possessing strategic solution and new application skills, the Group will benefit from software delivery best practices, improve and document application designs and system integration points,. This, in turn, will contribute to the establishment of an enterprise-level IT architecture underpinning critical business operations.
The Solution
Due to the Group’s high risk dependency on message format and security requirements which are changing throughout project and in the future, the project has been split into 2 phases: Inbound and Outbound. Due to the sensitivity of the data being processed, a flexible and secure solution was needed to accommodate amendments, with minimal impact on the overall delivery times. Following the second objective of using Java with the AS400, the main part of the processing logic is executed from the WASCE server via JMS message triggers.
Connect Direct was used to securely move and store the data between IF and Group; for inward payments, Access Direct was also used for international accounts. For a secure management of the credentials Kerberos technology has been used, eliminating the need to store username and passwords. Hardware Security Modules have been used for verifying inbound digital signatures; digital signatures are also applied to outgoing payments for transfer via Connect Direct.
The design and use cases in Sparx Enterprise Architect using UML have ensured a proper level of Project Documentation and capability to handover to Application Support Team, not relying on just a few key staff resource.
The use of Java with the AS400 has now been proven and the new design principles will allow a high degree of scalability and flexibility to accommodate future data formats changes and security requirements. The Group now has a platform for future projects relating to AS400 technology and high performance requirements.
The Results
The Inbound and Outbound Build phases have now been completed, and the go live dates are being targeted for early 2012, after the Outbound IF-Group end-to-end test phase has been completed.
Overall, the project has received positive feedback from the business team, and Endava’s technical involvement in defining the low-level design and documenting the use cases has been praised by the Group.