Advanced Software Technologies Provides Critical Technology for Blue Cross and Blue Shield to Provide Web-based Services.LITTLETON, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 7, 1999-- Results Cut Operations Costs and Skyrocket Productivity The challenge of affordable, quality health care remains one of the country's major issues as we venture into the new millennium. Amid rising costs, industry consolidation and the "graying of America," Advanced Software Technologies Inc. is providing Blue Cross and Blue Shield Blue Shield A US not-for-profit health care insurer that is a reimbursement intermediary for physicians. Cf Blue Cross. (BCBS BCBS Blue Cross/Blue Shield BCBS Basel Committee on Banking Supervision BCBS Barre Center for Buddhist Studies BCBS Bay City Baptist School BCBS Bishop Cotton Boys School (Bangalore, India) BCBS Bar Code Business Software ) with a leading-edge development tool to help bring the company's services to the Internet, control its costs and provide better customer service both through traditional methods and through the World Wide Web. As the nation's largest and most experienced private health care system, BCBS provides health care coverage to one in four Americans, equaling more than 68.7 million people. Several years ago, BCBS decided to re-engineer the business by moving toward a Web-based delivery service in order to reduce operational costs, provide better customer service and make information more accessible and accurate. The BCBS Web team recognized the need for a solid modeling and re-engineering tool to help design, communicate and document the evolution of major BCBS software architectures. Today, its Web information currently includes provider listings, physician referrals, claims processing and employment opportunities. "The Web and client server development areas are growing rapidly and solid design is critical to BCBS' long-term success. GDPro provides the easiest and most complete support available for UML (Unified Modeling Language) An object-oriented analysis and design language from the Object Management Group (OMG). Many design methodologies for describing object-oriented systems were developed in the late 1980s. modeling, that is critical to BCBS' success," said Greg Schottland, president and CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. of Advanced Software Technologies. The BCBS Web team integrated GDPro with BCBS' Microsoft Source Safe-based source code management system by using GDPro's Visual Basic for Applications integration interface. The integration provided BCBS with the ability to control access to projects by security level, check out files from within GDPro and link GDPro to Visual Studio. This VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) A subset of Visual Basic that provides a common language for customizing Microsoft applications. VBA supports COM, which allows a VBA script to invoke internal functions within Excel, Word and other COM-based programs or to make use of integration ability is not found in most other visual modeling tools. "Using VBA helps keep us working within the Microsoft environment and allows us to make GDPro work the way we want it to," said David Settle, senior client server architect at BCBS, who is responsible for the development and smooth operation of a major portion of BCBS' information systems. "We looked at a variety of other packages but shied shied 1 v. Past tense and past participle of shy1. shied Verb the past of shy1 or shy2 away because they all use code markers. GDPro kept BCBS' code clean and easy to work with. We were also won over by the fact that GDPro's Use Case diagrams A use case diagram is a type of behavioral diagram defined by the Unified Modeling Language (UML). Its purpose is to present a graphical overview of the functionality provided by a system in terms of actors, their goals—represented as use cases—and any dependencies are much cleaner than the other tools, which, in turn, eliminated a lot of confusion among team members." Another big advantage GDPro provided for BCBS was due to its unique class templates. Since Settle's team uses the class template the most, this eliminated the tedious need to rebuild them. Then, BCBS only had to input the logic because Advanced Software had already done the legwork leg·work n. Informal Work, such as collecting information or doing research in preparation for a project, that involves much walking or traveling about. ahead of time. This saved valuable time and rapidly sped up the development process. "The compatibility of our solution with BCBS is enhanced by GDPro's reverse and round trip engineering capabilities to work smoothly with BCBS' C++ code. The concise diagrams GDPro creates allow everyone to focus on the goal of the project and avoid miscommunication mis·com·mu·ni·ca·tion n. 1. Lack of clear or adequate communication. 2. An unclear or inadequate communication. ," said Schottland. "In addition, the code generation capabilities saves BCBS time, therefore making the entire development process much faster and less error-prone." "Using GDPro saves us valuable time and, like most businesses, that means money. UML was fairly new to us at the beginning, and Advanced Software's customer service representatives really guided us through how to best use GDPro," said Settle. "UML and GDPro offer a common methodology that really works for us. I would recommend GDPro to anyone." About Blue Cross and Blue Shield Blue Cross and Blue Shield (BCBS) is a federation of 51 independent Blue Cross and Blue Shield Plans that provide health insurance to more than 71.4 million -- one in four -- Americans. About Advanced Software Technologies Inc. Advanced Software is the technology leader in object-oriented software development, with a focus on developing modeling tools that revolutionize the design, maintenance and re-engineering of complex software systems. The company's flagship product A primary product of a company, which is typically why the company was founded and/or what made it well known. For example, MS-DOS, Windows and the Microsoft Office suite have been flagship products of Microsoft. CorelDRAW is a flagship product of Corel Corporation. , GDPro, provides developers unparalleled design and re-engineering tools for languages and design methodologies, including industry leading support for UML. The product has received acclaim in development circles and has been awarded the following:
- 1998 Best of Show -- Java Development, SIGS Java Conference
- 1997 Jolt Award Finalist, Software Development Conference
- 1997 Best New Product, Object World Conference
Advanced Software's products are sold worldwide through a direct sales force and a network of international distributors and to clients such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin For the former company, see . Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) is a leading multinational aerospace manufacturer and advanced technology company formed in 1995 by the merger of Lockheed Corporation with Martin Marietta. , Storage Technology, Lucent Technologies and IBM (International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY, www.ibm.com) The world's largest computer company. IBM's product lines include the S/390 mainframes (zSeries), AS/400 midrange business systems (iSeries), RS/6000 workstations and servers (pSeries), Intel-based servers (xSeries) , among others. A growing number of industry partnerships and a deep pool of talented developers make the company well-positioned for further technology breakthroughs and poised for development of the first true "killer application Killer Application Killer application or "killer app" is a buzzword that describes a software application that surpasses all of its competitors. Notes: The term is sometimes used to describe a type of software. " in the industry. For more information, e-mail sales@advancedsw.com, see the company's web site at: www.advancedsw.com or contact company headquarters at 7851 South Elati Street, Suite 102, Littleton, Colo.; 800/811-2784 or 303/730-7981. EDITOR'S NOTE Editor's Note (foaled in 1993 in Kentucky) is an American thoroughbred Stallion racehorse. He was sired by 1992 U.S. Champion 2 YO Colt Forty Niner, who in turn was a son of Champion sire Mr. Prospector and out of the mare, Beware Of The Cat. Trained by D. : Trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of the companies with which they are associated. |
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