Guidewire Notes New Standard for Claims Solutions

Guidewire Software, a provider of solutions for property and casualty and workers’ compensation insurance, announced a new standard for performance and scalability of insurance claims solutions, achieved on a platform of IBM hardware and software.

Using a single IBM eServer p690 server with 32 processors in the IBM Innovation Center in San Mateo, Calif., IBM Websphere Application Server (WAS) and Guidewire ClaimCenter successfully met a claims performance benchmark while supporting 5,000 simulated concurrent users. Median response times were 0.3 seconds and 90th-percentile response times were under 2 seconds. In addition, horizontal scalability results reportedly prove that the solution can scale to support considerably higher user populations by using additional hardware.

In the test, ClaimCenter and WAS ran on a cluster of five logical partitions within the eServer p690, with the database also running within the eServer p690, and all software running on the IBM AIX UNIX operating system. The database included 1 million claims, 2 million exposures, and more than 40 million primary business objects together occupying 100 gigabytes of space in an IBM TotalStorage FAStT900 Storage Server.

Load was provided by 5 IBM eServer xSeries systems together simulating 5,000 concurrent claim adjusters, periodically exercising all functions of the application according to usage profiles based on actual data from leading insurance claims organizations.

“These latest tests demonstrate the value of investing in a modern architecture and a high-performance technology platform,” said John Seybold, chief technology officer, Guidewire Software. “Together, the eServer pSeries, AIX, and WebSphere enable ClaimCenter to scale to meet the needs of any insurance organization.”

“Guidewire is one of many leading independent software vendors taking advantage of the power and flexibility of the IBM middleware,” added Cynthia Maike, insurance marketing segment manager, IBM Software. “These results further reinforce the benefits that insurance companies gain from a joint IBM-Guidewire solution.”

The performance test was run on Guidewire ClaimCenter 2.1, the most recent release of the first complete, web-based claims system for the property and casualty industry.

ClaimCenter 2.1 provides application server clustering for virtually unlimited scalability. ClaimCenter supports IBM WebSphere Application Server, a platform for mission-critical enterprise applications, as well as IBM DB2 and the IBM eServer pSeries systems.