SQL Server Integration and Reporting Services Helps Insurance Leader Consolidate Mainframe and Multiple Databases, While Enabling Dynamic Report Generation for More Than 800 Employees

REDMOND, Wash., May 22 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The Life Insurance Division of Pacific Life Insurance Company, a leading provider of life insurance products and services, today announced it has selected Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT - News) to help it standardize its data infrastructure, thus reducing overall costs and bringing improved business intelligence (BI) capabilities to more than 800 employees nationwide.

The company's Life Insurance Division was faced with a strong dependency between business and IT workers. Executives, business analysts, finance personnel and customer service groups that rely on corporate data found it difficult to access and analyze important business information due to Pacific Life's complex data schema.

"Our data systems are so dense and our reporting requirements so varied, we needed a robust, standardized, easy-to-use solution that would enable our various business factions to be more self-sufficient, and free our IT groups to focus on infrastructure improvement projects," said Cameron Cosgrove, vice president of information technology at Pacific Life.

After evaluating several options, Pacific Life chose a data warehousing solution based on Microsoft® SQL Server(TM) 2005 Enterprise Edition, part of the Microsoft Windows Server System(TM) family. The organization deployed BI features of SQL Server 2005, such as SQL Server Integration Services and SQL Server Reporting Services, which helped connect its disparate data sources that range from legacy mainframe data to multiple clusters of database servers in locations across the country.

"Enabling our business users to access our data warehouse directly through dynamic reports and queries has been a true testament to the power, functionality and accessibility of Microsoft software," Cosgrove said. "Our business groups are now able to gather client and policy data and generate meaningful reports on their own. And we were able to significantly reduce costs, allowing us to invest in additional innovations to enhance the experience for our clients."

With the new solution in place, Pacific Life's Life Insurance Division has a mechanism that allows the division's employees to easily manage, access and analyze data from an array of data sources. The SQL Server Integration Services data integration pipeline architecture allows SQL Server 2005 to consume data from multiple places, perform multiple complex transformations and distribute the data to multiple destinations. Pacific Life's data warehouse can be used for both large datasets and complex data flows.

As an example, in the new business development department alone, Pacific Life was able to distribute 20 self-administered reports that previously required a full-time IT person to administer. The company expects the new data infrastructure to reduce the IT staff's mainframe and custom report development time by nearly 80 percent.

"Pacific Life has shown great thought leadership in how it approaches technology to better meet its business needs," said Kevin Kelly, managing director, U.S. insurance industry at Microsoft. "By utilizing built-in business intelligence features as part of the Microsoft Windows Server System family, Pacific Life not only leveraged its existing IT investments, it can now also use that savings to innovate further and better serve its clients."

About Pacific Life Insurance Company

Founded in 1868, Pacific Life provides life insurance products, individual annuities, and mutual funds, and offers a variety of investment products and services to individuals, businesses, and pension plans. Pacific Life counts more than half of the 100 largest U.S. companies as clients and is a member of Insurance Marketplace Standards Association (IMSA), whose membership promotes high ethical standards for the sale of individual life insurance and annuities.

About Microsoft in Financial Services

Microsoft's Financial Services Group provides software that helps financial firms transform the customer, employee and operations experience so they can maximize opportunities for increased market share and profitability. Microsoft software helps empower people and IT staff within financial firms -- and across key focus areas such as advisor platforms, channel renewal, insurance value chain, enterprise risk management and compliance, and payments. Through a combination of Microsoft- and partner-provided solutions, customers enable their employees to turn data into insight, transform ideas into action and turn change into opportunity.

More information about Microsoft's Financial Services Group can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/financialservices .

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

NOTE: Microsoft and Windows Server System are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.

The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

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Source: Microsoft Corp.