Global insurance company undergoes digital transformation to preserve brand excellence

This leading insurance provider covers more than 50 million people internationally. It had traditionally managed its IT infrastructure in-house, but found it increasingly difficult to retain the expertise necessary to run the environment and at the same time implement the changes needed to transform the environment to meet business needs in an efficient and effective way. The company wanted to find a technology partner that could help it digitally transform the business, streamline management and reduce costs.

This insurer wanted to transform its business, reduce costs and free up internal resources to focus on more strategic objectives, such as cloud initiatives. As such, it needed to find the right IT partner to assist in this journey. Most importantly, it wanted better visibility of how IT was being consumed and by whom in order to more effectively manage costs.

Following a rigorous evaluation process involving workshops and demos, the company whittled potential partners down from six to two. Of these, Ensono was selected to lead this ambitious project. This decision was based both on its comprehensive solution portfolio and the cultural fit between the two organizations. The insurer is regularly rated as one of the best employers in the USA and was keen to find a partner that reflected its own employee-centric approach.

The challenge was to take a large and complex IT environment and transition to Remote Infrastructure Management for an initial period of time, followed by a complete migration of the mainframe and over 2,400 physical and virtual servers to an Ensono-hosted data center.

Ensono began by extensively documenting the processes and knowledge involved in the business, allowing it to gradually migrate management without disrupting day-to-day operations. Mapping applications and servers – both physical and virtual – enabled it to rationalize the estate and introduce a layer of transparency via a single pane of glass. Ensono also integrated the core mainframe into the overall management environment. The insurer and Ensono collaborated intensely at all levels, from the executive suite to the solution architects. This deep partnership helped enable a seamless transition and ensured that all stakeholders were personally involved in the project, thus minimizing any potential for error. With Ensono’s flexible management options, the insurer can reduce Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), while increasing security and availability through standardization and automation. Ensono worked with application developers to gather requirements and align server infrastructure, ensuring optimal performance and stability.

The insurer has now freed up significant internal resources which can be redeployed in a more strategic manner. It can also measure and understand IT consumption habits, enabling it to move to a funding/billing model, and helping it manage costs and boost efficiency. Powerful usage insights from Ensono Envision, an IT insights platform, identified risk areas in a single server and minimized mainframe CPU.

This infrastructure transition and transformation is the initial step on a longer journey to move workloads as appropriate to Ensono Private Cloud or public cloud platforms (AWS and Azure). In total, 364 physical servers, 2,400 virtual machines, 313TB of tier-one storage and 3.4PB of SAN storage will be transitioned to the new platform. When fully managed by Ensono, the insurer is expected to recoup its new environment costs within 18 months.