Zurich Insurance Group plots multiyear move to AWS public cloud | Computer Weekly

Zurich Insurance Group has agreed to migrate its entire enterprise IT infrastructure estate to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) public cloud, and has set itself a goal of moving 1,000 of its applications off-premise by 2025.

The company, which specialises in the provision of a wide range of insurance products to consumers, said the applications already earmarked for migration by 2025 include mission-critical, “core insurance” and SAP-related workloads.

This, in turn, will pave the way for Zurich to simplify, modernise and automate more of its IT infrastructure, as it works towards building out its agile software product development capabilities and delivering a revamped digital experience to its customers.

The SAP migration part of the project will play into this, the company said, by enabling Zurich to create a cloud-based repository for all of the SAP-related data it has stored across its business that can be integrated into various Amazon data analytics and machine learning tools.

Furthermore, the company said it plans to draw on the Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS), its fully managed Amazon Aurora relational database and its containerised web application fast deployment tool, AWS App Runner, to develop and deploy customer-facing apps and services.

These tools will enable Zurich to bring such offerings to market quicker than it has been able to in the past, with the company claiming the move will generate annualised savings for the firm of around $30m a year.

“As a result, Zurich can focus on innovation and new customer experiences, reinvesting valuable resources into new business opportunities, recruitment and acquisition strategies,” the company said in a statement, where it confirmed this work would see AWS become its preferred cloud partner.

“By embracing cloud technologies, Zurich will also be able to streamline and optimise its core business processes,” it stated.

Ericson Chan, group chief information and digital officer at Zurich, said: “We want to help our retail customers lead safer and healthier lives, and bring our business customers peace of mind, by using the power of digital technologies to meet their evolving needs.

“Working with AWS will transform the way we bring solutions to market and enable us to make the most accurate and up-to-date insights available to our customers. We look forward to using the new AWS region in Switzerland to support our regulatory reporting requirements.”

Matt Garman, senior vice-president of sales, marketing and global services at AWS, said Zurich was on course to reap multiple benefits as a result of entrusting its data to the public cloud.  

“Zurich’s focus on customers and innovation over the last 150 years is why it remains a leading insurer for more than 55 million people and businesses around the world. Moving its most critical business applications to AWS allows Zurich to put data at the heart of its business to automate processes, increase efficiency and improve customer responsiveness,” said Garman.

“Combining Zurich’s financial expertise with AWS’s broad functionality will help the insurer continue to evolve its business to anticipate customer needs and provide more personalised insurance products.”