Complex Divestiture & Acquisition-Driven
Transformation Leads to $15M Savings

This leading insurance technology organization provides business process services and software solutions. It was divested from its parent company and, within six months, acquired another business.

During the divestiture, and with a fast-approaching transition service agreement (TSA) end date, the new organization had to separate many complex systems. At the top of the list were its network and security systems.

The business also urgently needed to modernize its IT infrastructure and fortify its disaster recovery capabilities as this had historically been neglected.

Other challenges included:

• Aging and inflexible infrastructure as a result of historical underinvestment. This hindered its ability to efficiently manage operations.
• High fixed infrastructure costs due to three outsourced data centers. This resulted in high fixed infrastructure costs.
• Higher than average software costs which added to the problem.
• Significant skill gaps in middleware, database management and monitoring.
• Outdated security posture that impacted its ability to renew its cyber security insurance at a reasonable rate.

Less than halfway into the process, the company acquired a new—even bigger business. This meant that, in addition to the above, our client needed to integrate the new organization’s systems. The target company was larger than our client and had no ability to scale without incurring expensive capital expenditures. This limited the new entity’s growth potential.

The client needed a partner who could guide them through both the divestiture and acquisition while ensuring modernization. Ensono completed a full logical and physical separation of infrastructure in just six months, including network, authentication, and security services, allowing the client to exit their TSA early. Ensono also streamlined operations by exiting three leased data centers.

The newly designed infrastructure was agile, scalable, and ready to seamlessly integrate the acquired company.

Key achievements included:

1. Creation of high- and low-level design documents
2. Migration of 1,300+ virtual workloads
3. Transition from a fixed-cost model to a Price X Quantity variable pricing model for scalability and cost optimization

Modernization of Systems and Technologies: Ensono modernized the client’s systems with a full technology refresh:

• Mainframe upgrade from BC12 to Z14
• Migration of software and business solutions to Microsoft Azure
• Storage upgrades from spinning disk to NVMe for enhanced performance and accessibility
• Redesigned network using software-defined networking for improved reliability
• Application redevelopment to eliminate high annual software license fees and improve user experience

Bridging skill gaps and optimizing resources: Ensono addressed critical skills gaps in middleware, database management, and monitoring by bringing in skilled professionals. Resource utilization was further optimized by centralizing operations, improving efficiency.

Enhancing security posture: An Ensono Virtual CISO conducted a comprehensive security assessment, enhancing the security posture of the new entity and optimizing cyber insurance renewal rates. Disaster recovery processes were also improved, transitioning from tape-based recovery to replication-based, reducing RPO/RTO from days to hours.

• $15M savings over seven years through three data center exits
• 11% reduction in TCO and 21% reduction in OpEx
• $1M+ annual software license savings
• 430 enterprise applications migrated

The optimized IT operating model designed by Ensono improved the client’s security, accelerated hardware and software refresh cycles, and provided a fully functional disaster recovery service. This transformation allowed the client to focus on core business growth while achieving substantial cost savings and operational efficiency.