Western Computer Services Streamlines Insurance Underwriting with ILOG and Prima Solutions

SOA Foundation and BRMS-based Underwriting System Leads to Speed-to-Market Gains of Over 50 Percent

PARIS and SUNNYVALE, Calif. – Nov. 5, 2007 - ILOG® (NASDAQ: ILOG; Euronext: ILO, ISIN: FR0004042364) and Prima Solutions, a Paris-based provider of SOA solutions for insurance, today announced that Western Computer Services, Inc. has chosen ILOG JRules®, a key offering in ILOG’s Business Rules Management System (BRMS) product line, to automate its underwriting process for commercial lines of business. Western Computer is owned equally by Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance Company of Idaho, Mountain West Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance Company and Western Agricultural Insurance Company. Using JRules, an organization can implement rule changes in days or in real time instead of in months, achieving speed-to-market gains of more than 50 percent and enhancing its overall underwriting productivity.

Western Computer chose the Prima Platform as the foundation for building a service-oriented architecture (SOA). The Prima Platform encompasses an extensive reference Insurance Model (Prima IBCS™), a business process management engine and services repository (Prima Repository™). The new SOA foundation, together with ILOG JRules, has enabled Western Computer to realize a savings of several hundred thousand dollars annually by reducing its IT maintenance and underwriting costs. Savings are expected to be even more significant as Western Computer expands the use of ILOG JRules to other processes. ILOG JRules will allow the carrier to achieve a pass-through rate of over 80 percent and ensure consistent enforcement of underwriting guidelines across business units and geographies.

The new BRMS-based underwriting system will enable Western Computer to better support its owners and their business partners, by adding decisioning capabilities and automating different steps in the underwriting process such as eligibility determination, risk assessment and rating. Business users such as analysts or actuaries will be able to test, create and maintain rules, perform "what if" scenarios and have overall visibility into the rules that govern the underwriting process. Advanced rule management features provided through ILOG JRules will also allow the company to control who has access to what types of rules, obtain complete audit trails, and easily create rules that are reusable and exposed as transparent decision services in an SOA.

"We chose ILOG JRules because of its ease-of-use, advanced rule management features for business and IT users, and tight integration with the Prima Repository™ and Prima IBCS™", said Phil Teagle, director of application development, Western Computer. "By leveraging ILOG JRules with Prima Repository™ and Prima IBCS™, we were able to shorten the time it took to build our application by 30 percent. We now have the flexibility needed to build future applications faster and expand the use of a business rule management system across processes and business units. This new unified platform gives us the agility, speed and transparency we need to scale quickly as our business requirements change."

To learn more on the collaboration among Western Computer Services, Prima Solutions and ILOG, please visit the Oct. 16 Web presentation at https://www.cmpnetseminars.com/ars/eventregistration.do?mode=eventreg&F=1000634&K=1AA1B1. The webinar discusses the best practices for building a foundation for SOA-encompassing legacy data transformation processes, Insurance Reference Models, as well as business services and use of BRMS.

ILOG has consistently built on its history of product innovation to make it one of the industry’s leading providers of BRMS software. Forrester Research has recognized ILOG as a rules platform market leader, including the leader in rules platforms for Java. Customers of ILOG’s award-winning BRMS products include eBay, Equifax, Grupo Santander, Harrah’s Entertainment, Visa, Vodafone, Zurich and many other leading Global 2000 companies and governments worldwide. ILOG’s BRMS product line includes ILOG JRules®, ILOG Rules for .NET® and ILOG Rules (C++)®. To learn more about BRMS please visit www.ilog.com/brms.

About Prima Solutions
Prima Solutions provides standards-based software to support incremental transformation of existing insurance IT systems into component-based Service Oriented Applications. Built around an extensive Insurance Reference Model (Prima IBCS™), the Prima Platform complements existing infrastructure to enable a pragmatic and efficient approach to SOA transformation. Visit www.prima-solutions.com.

About ILOG
ILOG delivers software and services that empower customers to make better decisions faster and manage change and complexity. Over 3,000 corporations and more than 465 leading software vendors rely on ILOG’s market-leading business rule management system (BRMS), supply chain planning and scheduling applications, and optimization and visualization software components, to achieve dramatic returns on investment, create market-defining products and services, and sharpen their competitive edge. ILOG was founded in 1987 and employs more than 850 people worldwide. For more information, please visit www.ilog.com.

ILOG and ILOG JRules are registered trademarks of ILOG S.A. and ILOG, Inc. All other company and product names are trademarks of their respective owners.