Australian well being insurer nib’s cloud migration began in 2015. Nevertheless, it wasn’t till 9 years later, in 2024, that it was in a position to full the migration of 100% of on-premise workloads, 95% to Amazon Net Providers and the remaining 5% to different cloud platforms.
nib Chief Data Officer Brendan Mills stated mission prioritisation proved to be a problem, with IT balancing growth-related enterprise tasks alongside the migration. He stated the completed mission positions nib nicely for utilizing AI, which is being piloted for various use instances.
SEE: Evaluating cloud choices? See our comparability of AWS with Google Cloud.
Who’s nib, and why is its cloud migration an enormous deal?
Australia’s nib is a High-100 ASX-listed non-public well being insurer. With a gaggle income of AUD $1.7 billion final yr (US $1.1 billion), it affords well being and medical insurance coverage to 1.6 million Australian and New Zealand residents, and paid out $1.2 billion in claims over the last reporting interval.
Along with being amongst Australia’s largest medical health insurance gamers, nib can also be:
- An Australian high three participant and international distributor of journey insurance coverage.
- A number one supplier of medical health insurance for worldwide college students and employees in Australia, the place it insures round 200,000 worldwide college students and employees.
- Has an curiosity in Australia’s Nationwide Incapacity Insurance coverage Scheme, the place it has carried out a number of acquisitions and helps 40,000 members by way of its nib Thrive enterprise.
- Maintains a majority stake in medtech organisation Midnight Well being, which has supplied entry to healthcare by way of telehealth companies to greater than 160,000 Australians.
- Has a knowledge science and repair three way partnership with Cigna Company known as Honeysuckle Well being.
nib’s measurement, footprint and operations in a regulated business imply its all-in transfer to the cloud is critical. The mission wanted to contemplate key dangers corresponding to paying insurance coverage in a well timed method to prospects, safeguarding buyer information and minimising danger for buyers.
Why did nib resolve to maneuver every part to the cloud?
nib first began to experiment with the cloud in late 2015. Mills stated that, like many massive Australian companies, it began small with a view to accelerating shortly. The enterprise was primarily motivated by the agility that it believed shifting to the cloud may carry.
SEE: Our refresher on the benefits of cloud computing
The shift to the cloud was not all by design. By way of merger and acquisition exercise and development, together with the operation of a big journey insurance coverage arm, nib had seven disparate information centres; considered one of these was nib-owned, whereas the others had been a mixture of co-located information centres.
“We noticed the advantages of a extra centered funding in expertise that will profit our prospects, versus managing information centres and infrastructure,” Mills defined.
Shifting a major insurance coverage system of file to AWS
In 2019, nib migrated its company medical health insurance enterprise GU Well being to AWS. This marked a big enhance in its use of cloud companies, and one of many Australian medical health insurance business’s earliest migrations of an insurance coverage system of file to the cloud in Australia.
By way of the ultimate phases of the migration, nib has moved different a number of Excessive Inherent Threat methods. “By transferring these EIR methods, we’ve additional fortified our expertise spine, guaranteeing that vital operations are operating on superior and resilient platforms,” Mills stated.
Key learnings from nib’s epic cloud migration mission
nib achieved the migration of 95% of its on-premise workloads into the AWS cloud in February 2024, after the closure of the final of its seven information centres. Mills stated the remaining 5% of its workloads are supported by different cloud suppliers and SaaS methods. These are a number of the learnings from this cloud migration mission.
Select a cloud supplier aligned along with your cloud technique
Mills stated AWS was chosen because the well being insurer’s major cloud associate on the again of its product set, its scale and its robust potential to associate with prospects. nib is sustaining a 5% toehold with different suppliers as a deliberate technique to supply it with future optionality.
This was a consideration for nib in addition to insurance coverage regulator APRA, who’s absolutely aligned with nib’s method. “I’m not suggesting we’ll up our tent and transfer campground, however a few of these functions have been refactored, and now we have some optionality round a few of these.”
Inside prioritisation can place stress on mission timeframes
The most important mission problem was the momentum and prioritisation hurdles encountered after the mission began in 2017. Mills admitted that “we might have favored this to occur earlier,” regardless that nib was nonetheless taking a really methodical and risk-conscious method to the mission.
Mills defined that it’s typically “exhausting to get government colleagues enthusiastic about cloud migration” and that cloud and infrastructure was by no means seen as a cause to not help enterprise development. This meant balancing priorities between different enterprise expertise wants and the migration.
Working with regulators can require important time funding
nib labored intently with APRA to satisfy its stringent cloud adoption requirements and necessities. That is thought-about vital for methods of file, which keep data important for an establishment to find out its obligations to prospects and counterparties.
Mills stated nib spent a whole lot of time all through the method consulting with APRA, together with working up artefacts and offering data on its migration to make sure that it aligned with cloud computing steerage. He stated, whereas he wouldn’t name this tough, “there was a whole lot of it.”
SEE: The challenges and advantages of cloud migration
Anticipate technical challenges as merchandise and functions evolve
There have been some technical facets encountered all through the mission; Mills stated this occurred in some instances the place a product set had advanced or functions wanted refactoring. Nevertheless, he stated the enterprise went in with “eyes broad open” to those prospects.
Entrench cloud optimisation as an “evergreen and ongoing” course of
The well being insurer’s cloud optimisation is one thing that it continues to have a look at. Mills stated this sees the enterprise sitting down “shoulder to shoulder” with AWS to have a look at cloud spending by way of a finops lens to optimise and guarantee it’s “paying for the appropriate issues.”
What advantages does nib count on after its cloud migration?
Mills stated the finished cloud migration will present nib with an expansive surroundings that may be dialed-up or down, which can also be value environment friendly and permits higher member information analytics.
“The transfer may be very a lot a strategic determination on many fronts,” he stated.
“We’re assured in regards to the surroundings; AWS offers us with agility and adaptability, and permits nib to construct functionality in the way in which we function our enterprise and include prices.”
SEE: The cloud computing future, in response to Gartner
AI use instances being explored throughout nib’s enterprise
nib expects the cloud to permit it to develop its present use and future exploration of synthetic intelligence. The well being insurer is already experimenting with or deploying use instances for generative AI in various areas, together with “nibby”, an AI-powered voice and textual content chatbot.
nibby, which had managed 3.2 million buyer queries since its first launch in 2017, was developed and enhanced utilizing AWS companies, together with Amazon SageMaker and Amazon Lex. SageMaker is designed to assist organisations construct, practice and deploy machine studying fashions, whereas Lex is a managed AI service for constructing conversational interfaces.