The complete development capacities have been linked to the project IT++ by the end of 2001. “Therefore we decided to search for a general contractor through an invitation to tender. The subject was the design, implementation and migration of IT++ to the new platform in an overall project", said Mr. Stadler. The time pressure was extremely high, all the involved participants confirmed. The invitation to tender, which took place in January 2002, therefore contained very clear rules of the game and detailed time schedules.
Stadler: "We knew that only with such a detailed and structured invitation to tender, would we be able to meet the deadline". The new infrastructure had to be implemented by summer 2002 and then the actual version of IT++ had to be migrated. By the beginning of August 2002 the  further development of IT++ had to happen exclusively on the new platform. Therefore all the developers had to be trained in parallel.
Out of the four submitted proposals COMPAREX with SUN Solaris was choosen, which happened at the end of February 2002. “Only COMPAREX gave us the feeling that they really understood our needs," Mr.Stadler said.  Already in the offer phase COMPAREX showed the highest professionalism and played the rules of the game. COMPAREX experts asked the right questions to get the correct estimates of the dimensions.
To go with Rougewave as subcontractor was a clever move. The application IT++ is based on Rougewaves development environment Source Pro, based on C++. This decision ensured that COMPAREX, together with Rougewave, was able to migrate the Sequent platform to Sun Solaris in a professional and solid manner. Another decision criteria was price. “All the proposals showed nearly the same prices", said Mr. Stadler “but for the services part COMPAREX was a lot cheaper than their competitors". Two fundamental reasons for that are available:

1. Project-competence:
   
COMPAREX was the owner of the Austrian Sequent organisation and is currently one of the largest Sun-distributors. Therefore COMPAREX was able to estimate the necessary effort for the platform-migration. For the software-migration COMPAREX hired the Rougewave specialists, who on their part were able to offer serious price- and time-calculations. Because of COMPAREX’s own expertise for this project, there were only two subcontractors necessary, Sun and Rougewave. Therefore a slim and efficient project execution was possible.
2. Maintenance contract flexibility:
   COMPAREX offered the bundling of all Sun-installations within the Austrian Raiffeisen organisation to a combined maintenance contract. The result was a very attractive price for all participants.

“The exellent experience with COMPAREX in the past was also a clear advantage for them", Mr. Stadler described his considerations before acceptance of the bid. “In addition to the optimum achievement of the acceptance criteria everything else spoke for COMPAREX.
We like the proximity to customers of the COMPAREX employees and the handshake quality of their CEO Dr. Klaus Elsbacher", said Mr. Stadler. “During the hot project phase, which lasted five months, everything was conducted extremely professionally", COMPAREX projectleader Thomas Zimmel remembers. The experienced project team was able to handle all the difficulties, which are usual for such a large project. While Raiffeisen Bausparkasse was preparing its datacenter, to make room for the new server platform, COMPAREX was installing the Sun system within its office to allow the techncal staff of Raiffeisen Bausparkase to get familiar with the new platform very early.
Sepp Stadler acknowledges the prudence of the COMPAREX project managers. “COMPAREX was aware of the  risk of this project and involved all the necessary resources early enough." By July 2002 the new hardware, two Sun-Fire 6800, had been integrated into the existing LAN- and SAN-infrastructure. The system environment, based on two Unix-domains connected through a Veritas-cluster, was established. “Our challenge was", said Mr. Zimmel, “to integrate the new hardware into an existing Storage Area Network (Hitachi Storage, Magstar Drives)." 300.000 database-accesses per day, also during the migration phase, had to be handled without performance degradation.
Thomas Zimmel is very proud of the fact that he and his eight COMPAREX project contributors met all the milestones, and were able to hand over the system by the middle of August 2002. By then the actual development version of IT++ was already working.
Pleased about the project progress the responsible Systemmanager of Raiffeisen Bausparkasse, Franz Zsivkovits, said: “All tests have been running perfectly. In November the dress rehearsal for the migration of the complete system was completed within four days, although we planned for seven."
On March 1st 2003 sharp Raiffeisen Bausparkasse started full production with its new main application IT++. Within only five months COMPAREX created a new infrastructure in parallel to the production environment and migrated the software to the new platform. Sepp Stadler was convinced in his feelings: COMPAREX understands the needs of the customers and works according to them.

Raiffeisen Bausparkasse
“Market leader since 20 years"

Raiffeisen Bausparkasse was founded 1961 and specialised within the Raiffeisen Banking Group in providing housing financing. The owners of Raiffeisen Bausparkasse are Raiffeisen Zentralbank Österreich AG and the eight federal Raiffeisen organisations of Austria. The company has 357 employees and is being able to use the 2.400 Raiffeisen branch offices and their more than 20.000 well educated employees as a sales channel.
Because of this very broad distribution channel, Raiffeisen Bausparkasse has been able to become the market leader within the five Austrian Building Society Saving Banks within twenty years and has stayed number one since the beginning of the eighties.
Since its foundation Raiffeisen Bausparkasse has been able to help more than a million people with about 17 billion Euro of low interest money to create, obtain and enhance living space. Currently nearly 2 million contracts are being looked after. Additionally  Raiffeisen Bausparkasse has associated companies abroad in the Czech Republic, Croatia and in Slovakia.