VP/MS - Visual Product/Modeling System
The worldwide leading product for product lifecycle management
VP/MS provides the ideal solution to reduce the time and approach to new products, minimise costs and ensure the integration into a heterogeneous EDP environment right from the start. VP/MS allows the handling of product information as well as version and change management.
New products are directly defined by the product manager on the PC and can be integrated into the existing EDP systems (e.g., agency, policy management and benefit management systems) immediately after completion of the development process.
Being a fully integrated tool for business analysts and actuaries, VP/MS is the solution for the management of the product development process across the overall product lifecycle.
VP/MS consists of the following development and production components: 
VP/MS Workplace (Development):
- VP/MS Workbench: Product Definition
- VP/MS Test Suite: Product Testing
- VP/MS Documentation Suite: Product Documentation
- VP/MS Model Manager: Product Management
- VP/MS Checker: Product Design Check
VP/MS Runtime Environment (Production):
Central product server, making the product knowledge available to other applications in encapsulated form across platforms
The basic principle of VP/MS is based on SOA concepts and is supported by standard technologies such as Java and Eclipse.
VP/MS is used by 140 customers in 25 countries around the world. In Germany alone, 13 customers use VP/MS, including Top 10 companies in the German insurance business.
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Details to VP/MS Components 
VP/MS Workbench: Product Definition
The core of VP/MS is the VP/MS Workbench. It enables the product manager to independently redesign a product at his/her workstation and to test and maintain it at any time.
VP/MS focuses on the integrated environment providing all required functionalities from a single source and on the high usability resulting from the longstanding experience.
Definitions, calculations and rules are directly checked in advance in the VP/MS Workbench using the extensive testing and debug options.
Products are developed in modules and can thus be combined and grouped in a highly flexible manner just like in a modular system.
Overlay mechanisms, as they exist in state-of-the-art modelling environments, allow an efficient development of product variants and reduce the maintenance effort.
Top VP/MS Test Suite: Product Testing
The VP/MS Test Suite provides the product developer with extensive options to test a product model already in the development phase, but also during the overall lifecycle. Thus, the key quality factors 'reliability' and 'functionality' are actively supported during product development.
In contrast to development testing which is an integral part of the development process, product testing focuses on mass and regression tests as well as test coverage, test case generation, and automated test evaluation. Top VP/MS Documentation Suite: Product Documentation
VP/MS Documentation Suite is a tool for the creation of product documentations to support the product development process. The clear-structured visualisation of the product features and their provision as printable documents make product communication easier. It is therefore the key to an efficient design process. Top VP/MS Model Manager: Product Management
The VP/MS Model Manager provides the option to centrally manage product-related knowledge and thus share, comment and change knowledge and support a product and all modifications across the overall lifecycle.
In this respect, the VP/MS Model Manager focuses on the support of version / history management, development within the team, access authorisation, and support of the product release process.
One of the core functionalities of the VP/MS Model Manager is the central storage and management of VP/MS product models. Typically, new documents and data are produced when defining a product. All of these product and product component-related documents are consolidated into a module in the VP/MS Model Manager. Top VP/MS Checker: Product Design Check
Product development aims at creating standardised, maintainable and structured models. The VP/MS Checker provides businesses with the option to develop their own modelling standards, define these as meta models, and automatically check a product model against the rules defined in the meta model. The VP/MS Checker reports variances from the meta model and helps reduce testing and integration efforts.
The VP/MS Checker thus supports the establishment of a company-wide standardised product architecture. Top VP/MS Runtime
VP/MS Runtime is the core of VP/MS in the production environment and is used to procure and evaluate product information.
VP/MS Runtime is available for all prevailing IT platforms and operating modi (transaction, batch) and can be easily integrated into any application system. As a virtual machine, it contains the product knowledge and serves as a product server. VP/MS Runtime therefore meets the requirements of an SOA architecture, as the overall product is made available in encapsulated form as a service. Top J-VPMS
To optimise the efficiency of the integration of VP/MS into applications in the JAVA/web/application server environment, CSC offers a tool creating a 'JAVA layer' around VP/MS Runtime.
J-VP/MS is subdivided into the J-VP/MS Base, J-VP/MS Core, J-VP/MS-Enterprise Services and J-VP/MS-Web Extensions architectural levels which provide coupling layer-related services to VP/MS at the different abstraction levels. Top VP/MS and Eclipse
After more than 10 years during which VP/MS became a leading product lifecycle management tool worldwide with more than 140 customer installations, CSC takes a step towards the technological future and thus towards the tools of the Eclipse Open Source Community.
Eclipse is more than just an IDE (integrated development environment) for Java development. Eclipse is strictly component-oriented and therefore an open service platform that can be complemented by so-called plug-ins, as desired. Functionality can be added to the plug-ins by so-called extension points.
The plug-in architecture is a software design supporting a faster and more dynamic adjustment to different and changing user requests. This architecture enables us to provide different components that actively support the product lifecycle management.
By using Eclipse technology and the general plug-in concept, VP/MS provides the option to design an individual product on basis of standardised VP/MS product components in terms of a “soft customisation”. This creates new added value options in the use of software products. Top
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