Microsoft Azure

Customer Solution Case Study

Financial Services Major Prepares for the

Future with Microsoft Azure, Bets on Hybrid
Cloud

Overview
Country 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 this
as 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 its
test 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.

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

If we address capacity
management from the IT
standpoint and change
management from the
people
and
process
viewpoint, we can ensure
a smooth transition in
the future.
Goutam Datta, Vice President
Technology, ICICI Lombard

Situation

Solution

A 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.

ICICI 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.

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 Lombard
adds, 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 its
industry, 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.

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 management
time 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 interdependent 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

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.

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.

Girish Nayak, Chief Customer Service,

Operation and Technology

By moving 17 applications from our data

center to Microsoft Azure, we have been
able 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

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 to

Windows

Legacy Policy Admin System Online

Manager

Upgraded Windows Server

Commission Calculation Workflow

Edison

Web Portals for its Direct Customers

and Partners iPartner

Switched app OS from AIX to

Windows
Switched DB platform
Migrated application code based
from AIX to Windows

Upgraded Windows Server

Switch DB platform

migrate production workload to the cloud.

As of now, the non-production technology
stack can be considered as Microsoft Azure
ready.

Benefits
The 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 applications maturity is every
CIOs goal. By adhering to Microsoft Azure
guidelines and standards, ICICI Lombard
took the first step towards SDLC best

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 & Incharge Motor Analytics & Claims, ICICI
Lombard

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.

Plans
In 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.

For More Information

Microsoft Azure

For more information about Microsoft

products and services, call the Microsoft
Sales Information Center at (800) 4269400. In Canada, call the Microsoft
Canada Information Centre at (877) 5682495. 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

With Microsoft Azure, you can quickly

build, deploy, and manage applications
across a global network of Microsoftmanaged data centers. You can build
applications using any operating system,
language, or tool.
For more information, please visit
www.windowsazure.com.

For more information about ICICI

Lombard products and services, call
(91)1800 2666 or visit the website
at:www.icicilombard.com

Software and Services

Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Windows Server 2008

This case study is for informational purposes only.

MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published May 2014