DailyAccess Corporation is a national provider of qualified retirement plan services, which includes 401(k), 403(b) and profit sharing plans. DailyAccess manages the entire plan operations environment including recordkeeping, administration, regulatory compliance, trading, information access systems, mutual fund company relationships, sales support and client service. The company provides these services to more than 800 firms, managing more than 90,000 individual participant accounts. It also maintains working relationships with many of the leading financial services companies including AIM Funds, Fidelity Investments, Legg Mason, Putnam Investments, Franklin Templeton and The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation.

Since its founding in 1995, DailyAccess has been considered a technology pioneer. "We distinguish ourselves from our competition by being very efficient and by being very professional," explains Glenn Santa Cruz, Director of Software Development at DailyAccess. "We think of our service model as 'high-tech/high-touch' and dedicate ourselves to exceeding our clients' expectations by delivering timely, accurate and cost-effective service."

The company also distinguishes itself from competitors through its ability to perform triparty - or multi-fund - trading on its systems. DailyAccess was the first independent third-party recordkeeper in the industry to provide that service, which allows plan sponsors to offer multiple families of funds to its participants.

Challenge: Provide Secure, Web-Based Access to Plan Information
DailyAccess initially implemented a third-party recordkeeping system to manage the mountains of plan information for its clients. To secure the application and increase its efficiency by automating processes, DailyAccess essentially created a series of extensions and applications around this core recordkeeping system by using Sybase PowerBuilder. This was also the company's first step toward making the application accessible to retirement plan sponsors and participants via the Web. Plan sponsors, for instance, wanted the ability to view balances and submit payroll contribution information to DailyAccess online. Participants also wanted to be able to view their accounts and to move money between different fund holdings to achieve the best returns. The challenge was not only to provide access, but to provide role-based access that provided users with views tailored to their needs and governed by their permissions.

As DailyAccess grew, it continued developing Sybase PowerBuilder code to automate its system and facilitate client access. But as Web access became increasingly universal, the company realized it needed a more robust and flexible Web-based system, one that would grow beyond the existing Web-PB architecture. DailyAccess needed to find a better way to put a Web front end on its record-keeping application.

The key criteria for the Web-based system were that it had to enable DailyAccess to leverage its significant investment in Sybase PowerBuilder code, to do load balancing to ensure access to the system, and to support multiple component types as well as multiple platforms. After investigating its options, DailyAccess found its solution in Sybase EAServer.

EAServer Allows Code Reuse, Eliminates Cost and Risk of Rewriting
"When we found that we were growing faster than what our systems could support, we knew we needed to do something to allow us to scale in response to the demand," says Santa Cruz. "We needed something that would support large numbers of concurrent requests. We also wanted to maintain our intellectual investment in the Sybase PowerBuilder code we'd developed as well as preserve our hardware investments. Sybase EAServer fit the bill quite well. It allowed us to reuse our Sybase PowerBuilder code, to avoid a costly and risky rewrite of our existing systems. Its ability to run Sybase PowerBuilder, Java, C/C++, and CORBA components in a unified environment with seamless communication between them provided us great flexibility as we looked ahead to adding functionality and creating new applications. With Sybase EAServer, we're free to choose the best technology for the particular task rather than being locked into a single component type."

For example, DailyAccess has found that Sybase PowerBuilder works best for developing reporting functionality, while Java is a better choice for other functionality such as implementing XML handling, external sockets, and regular expressions for text processing.

'EAServer Is So Reliable, You Don't Even Know It's There'
"By moving much of our code - our business logic - to Sybase EAServer," says Doug Porter, a software developer at DailyAccess, "it's much easier to refresh our code and to apply hot fixes when they're required. Its cross-platform support is also quite beneficial. Thanks to Sybase EAServer, we now have the ability to use the right programming language for the right job on the right platform. Best of all," Porter adds, "Sybase EAServer is so reliable, you don't even know it's there. It just runs, and that lets us focus on other things. It's transparent to our customers, but it's the key to the uptime they see, which is very important to them."

Perhaps above all, DailyAccess requires reliability. "In our market, failure is not an option," says Santa Cruz. "If we deploy a system that doesn't give our customers the confidence that their requests or transactions are being handled promptly and accurately, they're going to feel that their retirement plans are at risk. One of the best things we can say about Sybase EAServer is that it's been extremely stable."

"As we look ahead," Santa Cruz adds, "I think we're evolving into a full-blown Web application that's hosted on Sybase EAServer. We've still got a large amount of code that we want to move onto Sybase EAServer so it can be shared across all of our applications. The bottom line is that for us to remain competitive, we need to be nimble. That means automating as much as we can behind the scenes to increase efficiency and keep costs low. Sybase EAServer enables us to do that.

Business: Provide Web access to client retirement plan information

Solution: Sybase EAServer, Sybase PowerBuilder

Results:

• Successfully ported recordkeeping application to the Web
• Saved 42 months and approximately $200K by not having to rewrite code
• Enhanced competitive position by providing role-based client access and views to retirement plan information
• Gained flexibility to use any programming language or platform for future development

This article is reprinted with permission from Sybase Incorporated.