Challenge
Facing a data center exit as part of its broader digital transformation efforts, a multinational insurance and wealth management company looked to migrate IBM i and AIX production workloads to the cloud.
Results
With Skytap on Azure, the company successfully migrated its business-critical insurance policy management applications to Azure, eliminating data center costs while gaining cloud scalability.
Leading multinational health and life insurance and wealth management company focused on helping customers protect wealth, grow assets and achieve desired financial goals.
The Challenge
Facing a data center exit as part of its broader digital transformation, a multinational health and life insurance and wealth management company looked to migrate its business-critical AIX and IBM i production workloads to Azure. The company wanted to move these workloads to the cloud because leaving them on-prem and not including them in its broader cloud transformation efforts meant the company would not be able to fully realize the cost and agility benefits of its cloud migration.
Because the IBM i and AIX workloads host the company’s core insurance policy management systems, the company needed to find a low-risk, proven path to Azure and looked to do so with little to no business disruption. Microsoft recommended the company use Skytap on Azure to run its IBM Power workloads in Azure given the solution was purpose-built to run IBM Power in the cloud. Doing so would provide a proven, simple path to Azure for the company’s IBM Power production workloads without incurring the cost to re-write, refactor or re-platform the applications.
Solution
The company selected Skytap on Azure to migrate its business-critical insurance policy management applications running on IBM Power to Azure. Doing so would accelerate its migration path for these core applications with minimal change and risk while allowing them to benefit from the global availability and scalability of Azure.
Working closely with Skytap Cloud Solutions Architects and Azure Product Engineering, the company created and implemented a proof-of-concept (POC) to validate the Skytap on Azure solution. Following a successful POC, the company formalized plans to complete the broader migration.
Outcomes
The multinational insurance and wealth management company successfully migrated its IBM i and AIX production workloads to Azure. The company was able to eliminate data center costs while gaining cloud scalability and agility. The move also affords the company the opportunity to extend the value and application of its existing IBM Power investments. Skytap credits the successful implementation to the close collaboration with the company, Microsoft and Skytap. Further, testing throughout the implementation ensured a smooth transition.
