Q&A with .msg systems ag about their certified solution “iRe.Cloud – Instant Reinsurance by msg”

As an international active group of companies “.msg systems ag” has been associated with SAP for more than 20 years. Their certified solution “iRe.Cloud – Instant Reinsurance by msg” is an intelligent cloud based reinsurance service for all insurers and is able to independently adapt processes through self-learning.Let’s hear from Stefanie Wagner, Project Lead of iRe.Cloud, .msg systems ag about their certified product and journey with SAP Integration and Certification Center (SAP ICC) team.

1) Congratulations on completing a successful premium certification with us. Tell us a little about your company msg?

msg is an independent, international active group of companies with more than 7,500 employees around the world. The group of companies offers a holistic service spectrum of creative, strategic consulting and intelligent, sustainable and value-added IT solutions for the following industries: automotive, financial services, food, insurance, life science & healthcare, public sector, telecommunications, travel & logistics, as well as utilities, and has acquired an excellent reputation as an industry specialist over the course of almost 40 years in business. Within the group, independent companies cover the wide variety of industry and issue-based competence: msg systems ag forms the core of the company group and works in close co-operation with the subsidiaries, both on a business and organizational level. This allows the competence, experience and know-how of all the members to be bundled into a holistic solution portfolio with measurable added value for its customers.msg holds sixth place in the ranking of IT consulting and system integration companies in Germany.

2) How long has been your association with SAP?

More than 20 years. In 1998 msg started to develop the SAP reinsurance solution.

3) How did you get to know about Premium Certification for SAP Cloud Platform?

We closely collaborate with the team of SAP Cloud SDK since 2017 (initially named SAP S/4HANA Cloud SDK). The SAP Cloud SDK’s Continuous Delivery Toolkit plays a vital part in delivering our product in high quality and a continuous manner. In a joint workshop on that topic at the SAP Innovation Center Potsdam, we discussed automation of software quality aspects in the Toolkit’s continuous delivery pipeline. At this opportunity, we also learned about the possibility to acquire the Premium Certification for SAP Cloud Platform for our new reinsurance solution. Since embedding software quality checks in the continuous delivery process is a key concern for us, we gladly took the chance to participate as pilot project in the certification.

 4) Tell us a little bit more about your product “iRe.Cloud – Instant Reinsurance by msg“?

iRe.Cloud is an intelligent cloud based ceded reinsurance service for all insurers regardless of their current landscape. The self-learning system improves quality and reduces costs by automation of reinsurance tasks. iRe.Cloud is a native cloud application, hence there are no upfront investments, implementation projects and maintenance costs. You can use it right away. More information about the product can be found at https://www.msg.group/en/ire.

 5) How has been your experience working with SAP Integration and Certification Center (SAP ICC)?

Overall, we have quite some experience with SAP certifications for our financial services and dairy products. For those, we have our software quality regularly certified by the great team of SAP ICC. The mutual interest in improving the quality of our software as well as the quality of the Premium Certification process resulted in a fruitful collaboration over the time of certification.

6) With the new premium certification, can you tell us how it will improve the cloud qualities of your product and also positioning it to your customers?

The certification is a very welcome addition to our continuous delivery approach and helps us to make sure that we have covered all important aspects of a cloud solution, especially those that are not immediately visible for our customers. Take operating a cloud native side-by-side extension using SAP S/4HANA as an example. The secure and reliable integration is a key quality for our customers and the certification process ensures that certified software meets those qualities. Certified solutions need to use only whitelisted APIs from SAP Business Hub, hence ensuring that a customer’s SAP S/4HANA systems can evolve independently from our software.

7) Why has it been important for you to acquire the Premium Certification for SAP Cloud Platform for your new reinsurance solution iRe.Cloud?

The insurance industry, especially in the field of reinsurance, is a very complex sector. It’s crucial for us that our Software as a service (SaaS) solution iRe.Cloud adds value to this industry and meets the high quality requirements. Premium certification is a proof to the market that msg as a partner is capable to fulfill high demands with its Cloud-native software iRe.Cloud.

8 ) Is iRe.Cloud one of the few European solution to acquire the Premium Certification from SAP?

msg is one of the few companies from Europe that has completed the entire certification process successfully as we’re kind of a pioneer on the SAP Cloud Platform where we develop and operate the Cloud-native software iRe.Cloud. Furthermore, we are one of the few companies that took part at the development of the SAP Cloud SDK for the SAP Cloud Platform. Thereby, as one of the ideal partner we decided to go through the process of Premium Certification. It was a special challenge to fulfill the Cloud requirements in the areas of „Operations&Support“, „Data Isolation“, „Performance“, „Security“, „Software Lifecycle“ and “Continuous Delivery”. We successfully mastered these targets.