ICICI Lombard_Microsoft Azure

7/23/2019 ICICI Lombard_Microsoft Azure

1/5

Microsoft Azure

Customer Solution Case Study

Financial Services Major Prepares for the

Future with Microsoft Azure, Bets on Hybrid

Cloud

OverviewCountry or Region:India

Industry:Financial services

Customer Profile

ICICI Lombard GIC Ltd is one of the

largest private sector general insurance

companies in India. Its services include

general insurance, reinsurance, insurance

claims management and investment

management.

Business Situation

The challenge in the future will be cost

versus size and complexity of IT systems.

The 2013 IT strategy meet identified thisas a key area that it needed to address.

Solution

ICICI Lombard is creating a balanced

hybrid cloudmoving development,

testing and pre-production to the public

cloud while maintaining production

applications on the private cloud until

regulations open up.

Benefits

Adds agility in provisioning servers

Opens the arena to hire the best

testers from around the world

Augments maturity to software

development lifecycle (SDLC)

Delivers speed and quality

More time for testing allows us to hire better testers

and run more tests. This will help reduce the error rate

by at least 15 percent. We believe the overall health of

the applications will fundamentally improve.

Girish Nayak, Chief Customer Service, Operation and Technology, ICICI Lombard

At a strategy session, ICICI Lombard outlined the need to meet

peak loads without increasing the data center footprint or

budget. It also predicted that the public cloud would become

commonplace. To test this out, in the first phase, it migrated itstest and development environment for 17 key applications to

Microsoft Azure. Immediately, it eliminated 35 servers. As the

landscape transforms, it will be able to deliver new exciting apps

almost instantly. For now, ICICI Lombard is happy with the

development maturity achieved.


2/5

SituationA year ago, ICICI Lombard undertook an IT

strategy exercise that envisaged the IT

landscape in 2018. This would allow the

company to create a plan that would keep

it on the cutting edge of technology and

make the company more consumer-centric.

From an infrastructure standpoint, there

was one big question: How does one

manage peak loads? Defining the goals

with reference to some current challenges,

Goutam Datta, Vice President

Technology, ICICI Lombard explains, Every

application has a peak load that is multiple

times the average load. For example, each

year on 31 March, every financial app is at

its peak utilization. Similarly, smaller apps

such as the HR system are accessed less

than five times a year by any individual; but

on review day, every employee commonly

logs into the system in a two hour period .

Girish Nayak Chief Customer Service,

Operation and Technology, ICICI Lombardadds, Cost versus average utilization is the

biggest conundrum facing any IT team. The

problem is that either cost or average

utilization infrastructure is under-utilized.

To overcome this challenge the company

was provisioning and de-provisioning

servers based on peak loads for key

applications. However, says Girish, this

created considerable time, resource and

financial pressures.

ICICI Lombard believes that in the future

the public cloud will become a reality in itsindustry, as security standards improve.

Industry will have a more favorable outlook

towards adopting this technology. Keeping

this in mind, it started to evaluate various

public cloud platforms.

SolutionICICI Lombard initially explored the cloud

platform for storage and email archival

systems. However, as it evaluated this, it

realized that it would make an ideal

platform to host non-production

applications. Due to Microsoft Azures

variety of resources, the extent of

technology support and overall security it

promises, it is considered one of the

mature providers of the public cloud in this

geography.

With its private data centers running

primarily on the Microsoft platform, ICICI

Lombard therefore decided to look at

Microsoft Azure closely. Microsoft Azure

allows us to do more. It manages the IT

infrastructure completely. We are always on

the latest technology. No more server

upgrades; we can focus on the

applications, comments Girish Nayak.

More importantly, Microsoft Azure

automates platform and application

management, thus reducing managementtime and resources.

Core Building Blocks in Insurance

Says Venkatesh Chodankar, Architect

Technology, ICICI Lombard, The initial

focus was on 17 core applications and to

create a migration path to Microsoft Azure

from heterogeneous platforms.This

process ensures all artefacts such as

documentation and source code is

available in one place. It also allows the

team to evaluate and understand the inter-

dependent applications.

The next step focused on the licensing and

support agreements for every application.

Finally, and probably the most important

aspect was to consider change

management and capacity management.

If we address capacity management from

the IT standpoint and change management

If we address capacity

management from the IT

standpoint and change

management from thepeople and process

viewpoint, we can ensure

a smooth transition in

the future.

Goutam Datta, Vice President Technology, ICICI Lombard

By moving 17

applications from our

data center to Microsoft

Azure, we have been

able to decommission 35

UAT (User Acceptance

Testing) servers. More

importantly, we are

ready for the public

cloud.

Girish Nayak, Chief Customer Service,Operation and Technology, ICICI

Lombard


3/5

from the people and process viewpoint, we

can ensure a smooth transition, says

Goutam Datta.

Moving Non-Production Servers to

Microsoft Azure

ICICI Lombard took key applications and

platforms such as policy administration,

claims management, web portals and its

internal integration platforms through the

complete evaluation process. We found

that many of our applications were running

on the older Microsoft platforms while

some critical applications were on the IBM

platform. A migration now would save us a

lot of time later, explains Goutam.

ICICI Lombard moved all pre-production

Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)

processes to Microsoft Azure. This included

test and development, user acceptance

testing and pre-production systems.

By moving 17 applications from our data

center to Microsoft Azure, we have beenable to decommission 35 UAT (User

Acceptance Testing) servers, explains

Girish. More importantly,our application

technology stack is ready for the public

cloud.This preparation will be immensely

beneficial when there is an opportunity to

migrate production workload to the cloud.

As of now, the non-production technology

stack can be considered as Microsoft Azure

ready.

BenefitsThe result of moving to Microsoft Azure

was that the IT and software development

teams benefited from better performance

and faster deployment. Both internal and

external customers also saw benefits from

the higher quality applications that were

delivered far more quickly.

Adds Agility in Provisioning Servers

The IT team can provision servers in a few

hours for the application development

team. As compared to the 35 weeks

earlier spent to provision and de-provision

the servers for application development

and testing, this has now become a

completely automated process. We only

need to put in a request, explains Bipin

Mundada, Vice President and In-charge

Motor Analytics & Claims, ICICI Lombard

Locates and Hires the Best Testers

There is far greater control over test and

user acceptance processes. For example,

says Girish Nayak, We found the best

testers for our insurance portal in

Bangalore. Hiring them was easy. In one

click, the data was available to them, and

they could test the application from their

office. Alongside, a separate vendor fixed

errors, reducing time and defect density

significantly.

Brings Maturity to Software

Development Life Cycle (SDLC)

More maturity in SDLC processes,

improving application development and

giving longevity to applications, especially

core business applicationsmaturity is every

CIOs goal. By adhering to Microsoft Azure

guidelines and standards, ICICI Lombard

took the first step towards SDLC best

Application Platform Changes

Core Policy Admin System

Pathfinder

DB platform migrated from AIX

to Windows

Core Claims Management System

FastTrack

Upgraded Windows Server

Switched DB platform

Underwriting Rule Engine Blaze

DB switched from AIX toWindows

Legacy Policy Admin System Online

Manager


Commission Calculation Workflow

Edison

Switched app OS from AIX to

Windows

Switched DB platform

Migrated application code based

from AIX to Windows

Web Portals for its Direct Customers

and Partners iPartner


Switch DB platform

We found the best

testers for our insurance

portal in Bangalore.

Hiring them was easy. In

one click, the data was

available to them, and

they could test the

application from their

offices. Alongside, a

separate vendor fixed

errors, reducing time and

defect density

significantly.

Girish Nayak, Chief Customer Service,Operation and Technology


4/5

practices. With more time for testing, they

were able to run more tests and hire better

testers. All this helped to reduce the error

rate by 15 percent. Comments Girish, As

we continue to develop and test

applications on Microsoft Azure, we believe

the overall health of the applications will

fundamentally improve.

Delivers Speed and Quality

The time-to-market decreased at every step

from provisioning infrastructure to faster

development and testing. Alongside, there

was a continual improvement in quality.

The overall benefit is a big jump in

application maturity, concludes Goutam

Datta.

PlansIn the next 12 months, ICICI Lombard plans

to migrate the rest of the non-production

applications to Microsoft Azure and

prepare a development operation layer as a

continued effort to leverage the public

cloud.

As the existing process matures and the

organization starts extracting the maximum

benefit from Microsoft Azure, it may

consider migrating a serious workload to

Azure, provided the support and business

environment evolves to being more value

driven.

Earlier, we spent 35

weeks to provision and

de-provision the servers

for application

development and

testing. Now this is a

completely automated

process. We only need to

put in a request.

Bipin Mundada, Vice President & In-chargeMotor Analytics & Claims, ICICI

Lombard


5/5

Microsoft AzureWith Microsoft Azure, you can quickly

build, deploy, and manage applications

across a global network of Microsoft-

managed data centers. You can build

applications using any operating system,

language, or tool.

For more information, please visit

www.windowsazure.com.

For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft

products and services, call the Microsoft

Sales Information Center at (800) 426-

9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft

Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-

2495. Customers in the United States and

Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing

can reach Microsoft text telephone

(TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234.

Outside the 50 United States and

Canada, please contact your local

Microsoft subsidiary. To access

information using the World Wide Web,

go to:

www.microsoft.com

For more information about ICICI

Lombard products and services, call

(91)1800 2666 or visit the website

at:www.icicilombard.com

This case study is for informational purposes only.MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS ORIMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published May 2014

Software and Services Microsoft Azure

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