Kemper Implements SOA

Kemper, a Jacksonville, Fla.-based P&C insurer that is a part of the Unitrin family of companies, has developed a new IT infrastructure based on a service-oriented architecture (SOA) using Progress Software's Sonic Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) and DataXtend Semantic Integrator (SI) products, Progress (Bedford, Mass.) announced on Monday in a press release.

The Progress solutions provide Kemper with the connectivity and data interoperability required to support an SOA implementation, the vendor says. The Sonic ESB provides event-driven messaging between multi-vendor ESBs and back-office systems, while DataXtend SI eliminates data discrepancies for more efficient policy administration by providing an ACORD-based, single view of policy data.

According to the press release, Kemper has leveraged the SOA-based infrastructure to eliminate batch processing across legacy systems, which has lead to improved speed-to-market on new products and services.

"The Sonic ESB and DataXtend SI enable us to provide an accurate, consistent view of information to independent agents from our siloed mainframe applications. This, in turn, greatly improves our customer satisfaction levels," Dan Benton, Chief Application Architect, Kemper, said in a statement. "The products we deployed from Progress Software have proved more valuable than we initially expected. Both products addressed our initial back-end technology needs and have continued to provide ongoing benefits that truly unite IT with our business goals."