Modernizing Insurance Application: Vaadin and Java for Smooth Transformation

HDI relies on its Policy application, which was developed in 2009, to manage intricate contracts, draft policy documents, and issue invoices for its corporate customers.

The outdated application was impeding business operations and HDI sought a modern Java-based solution that could thrive in the cloud. To achieve this goal, HDI was seeking a strategic partner to support them in the endeavor.

HDI’s Policy application has a complex architecture consisting of three tiers, with the backend containing the entire business logic and the front-end using an Eclipse RCP (SWT) client with 420,000 lines of code for managing the UI.

Previously, changes could only be deployed every two months, hampering the development team’s productivity. Bug fixes in the UI were not deployable on demand, leading to severe limitations in the application’s functionality.

To enhance its business-critical application, HDI chose to rewrite and modernize the Policy for faster development updates. For such an ambitious undertaking, they needed a close-knit team of developers to support them.

• Hicron provided the experts in the field and selected Vaadin as the main technology for implementation.
• 2 teams worked together: one dedicated to front-end technology transformation from Eclipse RCP to Vaadin, and the other to development on the business side.
• We launched high-quality software, which allowed us to do everything on the web without having a separate desktop application.
• We worked in Scrum. We hired extra testers to work better during the development phase through our Quality Assurance process.
• Thanks to continuing the app development in pure Java, HDI were able to reuse all of its current business objects, data containers, and more.
• To provide further new functionalities, the old Java code was refactored and upgraded to Java 8.

Vaadin, Mockito, JUnit4, TestBench, RCP, Java8, Oracle DB, Eclipse RCP, SWT, JPA, IBM Websphere, Maven, H2 DB, Camunda BPM S, plunk