"There was a migration project element and a managed services element whereby Triangle designed a solution to replace the company’s entire data infrastructure in a high-availability model across two data centres. They then took responsibility for the entire managed services of the entire system up to the application level. The technology used allowed us to migrate data over time, maintaining a live feed so that both systems could remain fully updated at all times.”
Faced with increasing data storage compliance requirements and demand for a better consumer experience, one major European insurance provider found itself in need of a better data centre infrastructure. The company wanted to enhance its data centre infrastructure to improve system availability, stability, and compliance while also achieving cost-efficiencies that would reduce its data centre expenses.
Instead of operating its existing data centres in Poland and the United States, the company wanted to bring those data centres closer to its operations in western European markets.
But the migration project faced added complexities due to regulatory requirements specific to the insurance industry: since the company is required to store and manage certain types of consumer data for a seven-year period, its data systems needed to remain fully updated at all times—even during the migration itself.
To achieve this, the company would need a new data infrastructure developed alongside the continued operation of its existing environments—and a live feed would be necessary to keep both systems fully updated and compliant.
To maintain continuity during the migration project, Triangle’s middleware experts took over management of the insurance company’s existing data environments, implementing improvements that increased the infrastructure’s stability and optimised operations throughout the development project.
These middleware upgrades took place alongside the development of a new, high-availability model utilising two data centres in western Europe to replace the existing infrastructure. These new environments equipped the company with six large Power Systems, two large FlashSystems, and the associated storage and servers required by those technologies. IBM i and Unix delivered the underlying operating systems for these environments, and Triangle implemented the patching policies, save and restore functions, and other software required to manage these environments.
At the conclusion of the migration, Triangle’s managed services team took over management of those entire systems up to the application level. In addition to Triangle’s SLAs, the managed services team implemented continuous improvement programs to further increase the infrastructure’s stability, availability, and long-term performance.
“One of the big challenges was the amount of data that had to be transferred, because insurance companies have to manage and store all of this data for seven years. Triangle used technology that allowed us to migrate data over time, maintaining a live feed so that both systems could remain fully updated at all times.”
With the new data infrastructure in place, the European insurance company gained a significant amount of computing capability that will meet the needs of its business commitments for the foreseeable future.
The company now has the infrastructure to support 24/7 availability on the web, providing customers with instant access to insurance quotes at any time of day. Better online and self-service tools have reduced incoming calls and queries from customers while facilitating an easier, more expedient customer experience.
The infrastructure itself has delivered new efficiencies that have lowered the total cost of operating and maintaining these environments, particularly with regard to system outages and other disruptions related to data centre availability. Improved stability has also improved the company’s ability to maintain compliance with relevant data management regulations.
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