The California Public Employee Retirement System(CalPERS), is the nation's largest public pension fund with assets totaling more than $225 billion. The System provides retirement and health benefits to approximately 1.5 million state and local public employees and their families. CalPERS announced today, that it has deployed the new Java-based core of their COMET operational system. The Corporate Online Member Employer Transaction (COMET) system handles transactions on behalf of all CalPERS' 1.5 million subscribers, and the system's 2500 employers use the system statewide. The COMET system handles at least 30,000 transactions per hour, and is deployed on multiple Linux clusters to cover batch and on-line workloads.

The new core application, called CDB(Corporate Data Base), was converted from over 1.4 million lines of Forte 4GL code to over 3 million lines of Java by SoftSol resources, the world leader in Forte application conversion.

"This application conversion was absolutely essential to maintain our level of customer service, and we could not afford any cost or schedule over-runs," said Gene Richie, CIO of CalPERS. "This 45 man-year project was accomplished on time and on budget, with no customer-visible hiccups. SoftSol's expertise in J2EE and Forte conversion was pivotal, and their international project team worked very well for us."

The CDB system, manages employee registrations, employer contributions, medical / pension benefit calculations and reporting. It has over 250 user screens and performs the supporting calculations and transaction management for user interactions.

"The CDB system, was one of the largest Forte applications ever built, and it certainly handled more transactional value than any other Forte application," said Srini Madala, CEO of SoftSol Resources. "We were thrilled to win the business, but are even more proud to have deployed the project meeting all of the state's functional, schedule and budgetary objectives."

The CDB conversion project was undertaken to leverage open-source technologies like Linux and Java that are expected to provide a more flexible, long-lived and economical system. The prior system had been built using Forte Software's 4GL, which is no longer supported by Sun Microsystems.

Find out more at www.calpers.ca.gov.