Southwestern Financial Services Chooses T1-SYNC for High-Performance Connectivity
Southwestern Financial Services Corporation has been serving the life and health insurance needs of individuals for over 60 years. Today, Southwestern Financial Services has offices in 46 states and continues to be a leader in the industry.
 In April of 1997, Southwestern wanted to make some changes in its data center that would reduce costs and pave the way for improved service to its thousands of insurance agents. "Our objective was to eliminate an expensive channel extender and our Token Ring LAN so we could use SNA from end to end improving the reliability of our network" said Daryl Ford, Assistant Vice President of Information Technology. "We wanted a reliable product that gave us the throughput we needed at an affordable price and connected Microsoft SNA Server remotely with the mainframe."
The computing configuration for Southwestern is complex. Two mainframes are located in South Carolina. These mainframes are connected to Dallas via two T1 lines. One T1 line is connected to a 3745 front-end processor. The other T1 line is split between a PC with SNA Server and a PC with BARR / RJE that drives three Xerox 4090 printers and one Xerox 8790 MICR printer. File transfers are completed using a high-speed scanner, and the Tempest Connectivity solution from Micro Tempus.
T1-SYNC for SNA Server from Barr Systems was selected as the solution to provide connectivity to both Microsoft SNA Server and the BARR / RJE PC. "The experience we have enjoyed with the BARR / RJE and PRINT370 products told us that if Barr Systems had a solution that met our needs, it would be our first choice" commented Ford. After installing and configuring the product there was no need to try solutions from any other vendors. "It was easy to set-up and configure, it had the speed we wanted, the price was right, and it worked great with SNA Server!"
Southwestern will soon be using the T1-SYNC for SNA Server product as part of a total solution to better serve their insurance agents. A pilot project is currently underway to replicate data from the mainframe to the SNA Server PC to provide insurance agents with access to data through an Internet browser.
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