Thomas Miller Manages Risks at Sea—and on WAN

Dating as far back as the nineteenth century, Thomas Miller has supplied insurance and risk management services to the international transport industry. Today it provides insurance for 20 percent of the world’s deep-sea tonnage and many players in the shipping industry. To do so, the company relies on its critical business applications—and Compuware products and services.

The central IT group at Thomas Miller develops business-critical applications in-house at the company’s London headquarters and rolls them out to users around the world. Currently underway is a service level management program designed to help the team set and keep specific service levels. "To make meaningful commitments about service, we needed to be able to measure not just hardware availability, but also application availability and performance," says Alan Dainty, network services manager with Thomas Miller & Co., the group’s London operating company. That’s an aim Compuware’s products and services are helping Thomas Miller to achieve.

Compuware also helps ensure new or modified applications perform acceptably when deployed across a global user base. Dainty explains that in the past there were applications that worked well in London, but performed disappointingly when invoked remotely. "When that happens it can take weeks to correct the problem," he says. "It’s much better to ensure that your application will perform to the highest level possible from day one."

Proving the Tools

Thomas Miller began working with Compuware late in 2001 on the recommendation of another consulting firm working on the service-level initiative. Compuware first became involved before the deployment of OASIS, an image-based system developed by Thomas Miller to replace the large quantity of paper files traditionally associated with handling insurance claims.

Currently, OASIS runs centrally in Thomas Miller’s London headquarters, but ultimately will be used by 10 sites worldwide. Even though some data is duplicated locally, the system consumes a considerable amount of WAN bandwidth. Response times are critical since the system is used to access data while, for example, a claims handler speaks to a ship owner over the phone about a claim. OASIS was already live in London and Piraeus (Athens). "Because this application is so critical to our business," says Dainty, "we wanted to be in a position to model performance before we rolled it out worldwide, and to monitor it closely from then on."

In a matter of weeks, Thomas Miller deployed Compuware NetworkVantage, which required the installation of probes at each site. Probes were configured in London and dispatched to local offices for installation. The probes then could be managed centrally. No sooner did NetworkVantage deliver detailed traffic profiles than Thomas Miller spotted an opportunity for substantial bandwidth savings. "Our technicians became productive with the tool straight away," says Dainty. "We quickly identified some excessive traffic that we weren’t expecting to see on the network. Eliminating that was an immediate benefit because it could have interfered with the running of OASIS."

Thomas Miller analyzed OASIS using Application Expert, and again found immediate results. "A Compuware consultant came in for half a day. A couple of days later we had a report that, combined with the consultant’s face-to-face advice, helped us make some important improvements to the way the software retrieved information, making it much more effective," recalls Dainty.

Day-to-Day Use

Since the OASIS project, Thomas Miller has incorporated Compuware tools into its business processes and continuously uses NetworkVantage to monitor the network. "We currently use automated reports to monitor performance, but in the future we’ll implement alerts that will immediately inform us if a given application starts to degrade in performance," says Dainty. "That should help nip problems in the bud before users even notice them."

Compuware Application Expert, too, is in routine pre-deployment use. "When we were developing applications in London, it was hard to estimate how they would perform when they ran from, say, Sydney," explains Dainty. "Now we can see how the application works before it’s deployed, which is invaluable."

Adding Compuware QACenter

With its IT group continually enhancing key corporate applications, thorough regression testing prior to deploying a new release is as important at Thomas Miller as it would be for any software house. Thomas Miller chose to test its new and modified application with QACenter. "QACenter was, like the other tools from the Compuware product family, intuitive and easy-to-use, so it made sense to stick with one supplier," Dainty states. Creating test scripts within QACenter helps Thomas Miller automate repetitive testing, freeing up the testing team for more stimulating tasks. It also guarantees that tests run consistently every time.

Big Business Benefits

The NetworkVantage tools currently are used by several members of the Network Services team and provide application performance and network usage statistics from seven global locations and 555 users using LAN, WAN and Internet-based probes. "We’ve significantly lowered the risk of a new application failing, and of having to fix or tune applications once they’re in production—always much more costly than eliminating the problem before deployment," says Dainty.

From an operational point of view, Dainty explains how the tools allow Thomas Miller to proactively control and plan network usage and help to reduce the support costs associated with problem resolution. "We’re undoubtedly using bandwidth more efficiently. Without the tools to eliminate unnecessary network traffic, we might well have had to upgrade sooner," he says. "The Compuware tools make performance improvement more systematic. We no longer have to rely on experience and trial-and-error. As our systems become more efficient and more usable, our end users become more productive too."
There are also advantages in working with Compuware professional services. "Whenever we’ve called in Compuware, the experience has been positive," Dainty states. "Their people are knowledgeable, and quickly grasp what we’re trying to achieve."

Current plans include further work with Compuware professional services to enhance the use of NetworkVantage by introducing alerts. Dainty says, "A big part of this exercise is to understand the expectations of users, and we still need to do more work on that. We now have the tools in place to help us meet our targets and demonstrate that we’re meeting them." With hindsight, Dainty would have introduced the Compuware tools earlier on. "However, until you start using a product like NetworkVantage, you don’t realize just how useful it’s going to be. I would recommend it to anyone that has to manage distributed applications," he says. "Application Expert, too, can bring you peace of mind. Without tools like these, rolling out applications over a worldwide network is always going to be a gamble."