Summary

Republic Indemnity is a worker’s compensation insurance organization that used FastFax to distribute insurance policy agreements via fax. Their process is completely outbound and event-driven without the need for batch faxes. While Republic Indemnity’s distribution needs aren’t enormous – they send one to two-dozen faxes per day – the time savings from FastFax are significant. FastFax saves personnel at least 10 minutes per document they send.

Prior to upgrading from FastFax to QuadraDocV, Republic Indemnity ran a physical PC server with Windows 2003 that connects to their IBM i. An external security vulnerability scan by the American Financial Group uncovered several security vulnerabilities with the now-unsupported OS.

Challenge

Republic Indemnity didn’t take the decision to upgrade lightly. “I was reluctant, moving from a stable environment, and potentially bringing down our production during the process,” says Mark Smith, Republic Indemnity’s IBM i Administrator.

“Our challenge was fitting this into our schedule,” Mark continues. “We discussed it in January, then allocated three to four months for analysis and scheduling.”

The organization also had to choose whether or not they’d keep their existing fax infrastructure. “We weren’t sure if we wanted to continue using analogue lines or move to VOIP,” says Mark. “We also weren’t sure if we should move from physical server to a virtual machine.”

Solution

Quadrant’s professional services team provided several recommendations and helped develop a step-by-step implementation plan. Republic Indemnity chose to continue using the analogue lines and move to a virtual machine. “We decided that VOIP wasn’t as mature as we needed,” says Mark.

Quadrant created Republic Indemnity’s VM environment and assisted with the IBM i integration. They used a development, production and disaster recovery environments that enabled them to test the product and connectivity. “That gave us confidence to move to production,” says Mark. “There was no downtime during the upgrade.”

Results

“The upgrade went really smoothly,” says Mark. “Not only did it go well, it’s just like we’re on the physical box. It’s solid, it stays up, we don’t hear from it. We were able to keep everything underneath the same.”

“Dumping the physical box means that we no longer have to maintain it. The efficiency of a VM versus a physical box speaks for itself. The ease on a day-to-day basis, in today’s day and age, is the way it should be. We don’t have to upgrade it or even pay for the electricity.”

Republic Indemnity’s experience with Quadrant was also positive. “I can’t say enough about their technical expertise, wittiness and willingness to be there whenever we need them.”

About Republic Indemnity

Since its founding approximately half a century ago, Republic Indemnity has served the workers' compensation needs of small and medium-sized businesses in California and the western United States. Their many years of diversified workers' compensation specialization makes us the ultimate choice for employee injury coverage needs.

About Quadrant Software

Founded in 1990 and headquartered in Mansfield, MA, Quadrant Software is a leading provider of digital document distribution and modernization software that integrates into and enhances your enterprise application workflow.

Quadrant is part of the Quadrant Group, which also includes:

• BCD, a leading provider of web application development and IBM i modernization solution
• ExcelSystems, which develops and supports BCD solutions
• Netlert, which develops an Avaya call center performance analysis solution
• SoftBase, which provides application testing and tuning solutions for IBM's DB2 database utilizing the OS/390 and z/OS operating systems.