Insurer urges flexible SOA approach

IDG News Service - As more companies apply a service-oriented architecture approach to their IT systems, a health care insurer that became serious about its SOA deployment last year suggests its peers keep open minds about the new concept's possibilities.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts Inc. (BCBSMA) has most of its core applications, such as enrollment and billing, still residing on its IBM mainframe and isn't planning to move them off anytime soon. The company provides coverage to 2.9 million members across Massachusetts.

What the insurer is keen to do is quickly and cost effectively create more Web-based services so that its members can easily access information contained in those back-office applications.

Frank Enfanto, vice president of health care services systems delivery at BCBSMA, stressed that SOA is an approach to development, not a product. "You can't say you want to ship SOA," he said during a Sun Microsystems Inc. SOA roundtable event this week. What companies need to do is think about where in their operations they want to start taking an SOA approach and what that project might look like when it's done, Enfanto added.

BCBSMA's SOA approach is based on Sun's Java Enterprise System (JES) software, which includes the technology Sun acquired through the August 2005 purchase of business integration software vendor SeeBeyond Technology Corp. BCBSMA first adopted SeeBeyond software in 2000 and Sun's JES in early 2004.

The initial move toward SOA was driven by BCBSMA's desire to get away from a vertical, silo-type approach to software development to a more horizontal focus where it might be possible to repurpose existing technologies. Although the insurer outsources its application development, with Electronic Data Systems Corp. (EDS) as its primary IT service provider, BCBSMA has its own systems architects who are ultimately responsible for its applications.

Once BCBSMA determined it wanted to get serious about SOA, the first thing it did was create a team of its own architects and staffers from Sun and EDS.

"There was no project or contract associated with it," Enfanto said. "We didn't create governance or rules; we needed to find out how SOA would work." A lot of effort last year went into creating general awareness among BCBSMA staff, both technical and business people, as to what an SOA approach to the insurer's IT systems might entail. That education process "gave us the basis of something to stand on," he added.

The completion of a claims management Internet portal for physicians and health care providers in June 2006 presented a perfect opportunity to start