1. Private cloud brings insurer virtual savings
CASE
STUDY
JENNIFER FORESHEW
GROWING data centre man-agement
costs and inefficiencies
prompted insurer Allianz Austra-lia
to modernise its virtualisation
platform.
The country’s fourth-largest
general insurance company
wanted a stable, scalable environ-ment
that could be provisioned
and consumed in a self-service
model. Allianz Australia’s IT
department faced challenges in
delivering business needs, with a
lead time of up to six to seven
weeks for provisioning of infra-structure
requirements.
It also had concerns about
disaster recovery, particularly the
reliability of data storage.
The existing systems Allianz
Australia had virtualised on were
nearing end of life.
“They were still operational
and still functional, and we still
had that stability there, but we
saw a need to do that refresh
and get extra functionality and
benefits,’’ according to Allianz
Australia infrastructure manager
Jonathan Buckley.
Allianz Australia had also
experienced a major outage on its
existing virtualisation platform.
At the end of 2012, it started
investigating options for an on-premises
private cloud.
“I wasn’t interested in a turn-key
solution,’’ Mr Buckley says.
“I wanted a scalable solution
that we could add to and grow as
we needed it.’’
Allianz Australia has about
3500 staff across 29 sites, with
about 400 IT staff, mostly based
in Sydney. Allianz Group pro-vides
services to 78 million people
in 70 countries.
In Australia, it has two million
policyholders for car, home,
travel, CTP, business and life
insurance.
Allianz Australia initially com-pleted
a pilot project using Win-dows
Server 2012 R2 and Hyper-
V as a proof of concept.
“We looked at automation, we
looked at all those key aspects of
resiliency, scalability and what we
could get from an agile point of
view. And as part of that proof of
concept, one of the development
teams was able to rapid provision
one of their environments,’’
Buckley says.
Allianz Australia opted to
deploy an on-premises Microsoft
private cloud in its private data
centre, running on FlexPod with
Microsoft Private Cloud, Win-dows
Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V
and System Centre 2012 R2 for
automation and orchestration.
The company wanted to build
the capability of its internal IT
team and partnered with Micro-soft
through a Premier Support
agreement.
The implementation took
about 3½ months and has been
installed for almost a year.
Allianz Australia now effec-tively
offers its cloud on an “IT as a
service” model across a hetero-geneous
fleet of Windows and
Linux-based environments. “For
me, it has really alleviated a lot of
management overhead, so the
engineers now can focus on more
value-add, and the staff are look-ing
at ways to further enhance
and develop,’’ Mr Buckley says.
Full migration from the pre-vious
virtualisation platform is
under way and expected to be
completed soon.
“We are looking at further
consolidation of Sequel Server on
to this platform and then we can
give the DBAs (data base admin-istrators)
the ability to self-provision
— but not only that,
give them a single-pane-of-glass
view of all their services running
on this environment.’’
While provisioning previously
took weeks and multiple teams
because the previous x86 virtuali-sation
platform did not have a
self-service option, Hyper-V and
System Centre now only takes
minutes.
Windows Server and Hyper-V
have enabled Allianz Australia to
make significant data centre
space consolidation and savings,
including a 20 per cent reduction
in server racks and projects sav-ings
of more than 42 per cent.
Mr Buckley says, from the
point of view of capital expendi-ture,
the physical infrastructure
initial purchases cost just over
$1.2 million. “Then it was all run
out of the BAU (Business As
Usual) team, so the average for
over 3½ months was potentially
two FTEs (full-time equivalents)
spread out across that team.’’
The company has measured
the projected cost saving of the
production environment and, by
end of year one, expects to
achieve cost savings of 38 per cent.
By the end of year two, Allianz
Australia projects saving of more
than 42 per cent.
As Microsoft starts rolling out
additional Azure services in Aus-tralia,
Allianz Australia expects to
explore options for implementing
a hybrid cloud as an extension of
its on-premises private cloud
deployment.
Allianz Australia chief infor-mation
officer Steve Coles says
the technology has been transfor-mational
for the company’s de-velopment
group.
“It has given them tools and
frameworks that they didn’t have
before, an ability to take control,
and the byproduct is they are sig-nificantly
more productive ... from
a business perspective it means
that we can get functionality to
our business and our end custom-ers
much faster and (of) much bet-ter
quality,’’ Mr Coles says.
Copyright Agency licensed copy
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The Australian, Australia
09 Dec 2014, by Jennifer Foreshew
IT Today, page 29 - 643.00 cm²
National - circulation 116,854 (MTWTF)
ID 350452740 BRIEF MICROSOFT INDEX 1 PAGE 1 of 2

2. ID 350452740 BRIEF MICROSOFT INDEX 1 PAGE 2 of 2
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ALLIANZ
AUSTRALIA
PROBLEM: Burgeoning data
centre management costs and
inefficiencies created a need to
modernise its virtualisation
platform.
PROCESS: Microsoft’s private
cloud platform.
RESULT: Significant data centre
space consolidation and
savings, with a 20 per cent
reduction in server racks and
project savings of more than
42 per cent.
The Australian, Australia
09 Dec 2014, by Jennifer Foreshew
IT Today, page 29 - 643.00 cm²
National - circulation 116,854 (MTWTF)
Jonathan Buckley says the new functionality ‘has really alleviated a lot of management overhead, so the engineers now can focus on more value-add’