You dont need a crystal ball to see carriers are moving toward Web services, and Providence Wash-ington Insurance, a Rhode Island-based property/casualty insurer, recognized the inevitability. Ed Leveille, vice president, systems, and CIO for Providence Washington, says, Looking into the future, you could see our business moving toward Web services with our business partners as wellboth our independent agents and organizations such as IVANS and Dun & Bradstreet.

Providence Washington didnt feel building its own integration system would be the best course, so the company met with consultant Gartner to plan out a course of action. Over a span of about 12 months, Providence Washington used a search committee made up almost entirely of information services staff members and narrowed the field to three or four vendors, according to Leveille. Eventually the decision was made to choose Metaserver and its Business Process Integration (BPI) software known as P/C Carrier Integration Solution.

We chose Metaserver for three reasons, says Leveille. The transformation and load component was fairly strong in comparing it to the competition. The user interface for building the process flows through the various components and was very strong. Last, the ROI, based on our figures, was going to be very short with the Metaserver solution as opposed to the other vendors.