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 Internet Providers and the remaining 5% to different cloud platforms.
nib Chief Data Officer Brendan Mills stated challenge prioritisation proved to be a problem, with IT balancing growth-related enterprise initiatives alongside the migration. He stated the completed challenge positions nib properly for utilizing AI, which is being piloted for quite a few use instances.
SEE: Comparing cloud options? See our comparison of AWS with Google Cloud.
Who’s nib, and why is its cloud migration a giant deal?
Australia’s nib is a High-100 ASX-listed non-public well being insurer. With a bunch 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 insurance gamers, nib can also be:
- An Australian high three participant and world distributor of journey insurance coverage.
- A number one supplier of medical 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 accomplished a number of acquisitions and helps 40,000 individuals by means of its nib Thrive enterprise.
- Maintains a majority stake in medtech organisation Midnight Well being, which has offered entry to healthcare by means of telehealth companies to greater than 160,000 Australians.
- Has an information 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 challenge wanted to contemplate key dangers corresponding to paying insurance coverage in a well timed method to prospects, safeguarding buyer knowledge and minimising threat for buyers.
Why did nib determine to maneuver every little thing to the cloud?
nib first began to experiment with the cloud in late 2015. Mills stated that, like many giant Australian companies, it began small with a view to accelerating shortly. The enterprise was primarily motivated by the agility that it believed transferring to the cloud might deliver.
SEE: Our refresher on the advantages of cloud computing
The shift to the cloud was not all by design. By means of merger and acquisition exercise and development, together with the operation of a giant journey insurance coverage arm, nib had seven disparate knowledge centres; one among these was nib-owned, whereas the others had been a mixture of co-located knowledge centres.
“We noticed the advantages of a extra centered funding in know-how that will profit our prospects, versus managing knowledge centres and infrastructure,” Mills defined.
Transferring a major insurance coverage system of report to AWS
In 2019, nib migrated its company medical insurance enterprise GU Well being to AWS. This marked a major improve in its use of cloud companies, and one of many Australian medical insurance business’s earliest migrations of an insurance coverage system of report to the cloud in Australia.
By means of the ultimate phases of the migration, nib has moved different a number of Excessive Inherent Danger programs. “By transferring these EIR programs, we’ve additional fortified our know-how spine, making certain that vital operations are working on superior and resilient platforms,” Mills stated.
Key learnings from nib’s epic cloud migration challenge
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 knowledge centres. Mills stated the remaining 5% of its workloads are supported by different cloud suppliers and SaaS programs. These are a few of the learnings from this cloud migration challenge.
Select a cloud supplier aligned together with your cloud technique
Mills stated AWS was chosen because the well being insurer’s major cloud companion on the again of its product set, its scale and its sturdy means to companion 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 are going to up our tent and transfer campground, however a few of these functions have been refactored, and we now have some optionality round a few of these.”
Inner prioritisation can place strain on challenge timeframes
The most important challenge situation was the momentum and prioritisation hurdles encountered after the challenge began in 2017. Mills admitted that “we might have favored this to occur earlier,” although nib was nonetheless taking a really methodical and risk-conscious method to the challenge.
Mills defined that it’s typically “onerous to get govt colleagues enthusiastic about cloud migration” and that cloud and infrastructure was by no means seen as a motive to not help enterprise development. This meant balancing priorities between different enterprise know-how wants and the migration.
Working with regulators can require important time funding
nib labored carefully with APRA to fulfill its stringent cloud adoption standards and requirements. That is thought-about vital for programs of report, which keep info important for an establishment to find out its obligations to prospects and counterparties.
Mills stated nib spent lots of time all through the method consulting with APRA, together with working up artefacts and offering info on its migration to make sure that it aligned with cloud computing steering. He stated, whereas he wouldn’t name this tough, “there was lots of it.”
SEE: The challenges and benefits of cloud migration
Count on technical challenges as merchandise and functions evolve
There have been some technical features encountered all through the challenge; Mills stated this occurred in some instances the place a product set had developed or functions wanted refactoring. Nevertheless, he stated the enterprise went in with “eyes vast 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 take a look at. Mills stated this sees the enterprise sitting down “shoulder to shoulder” with AWS to take a look at cloud spending by means of a finops lens to optimise and guarantee it’s “paying for the best issues.”
What advantages does nib count on after its cloud migration?
Mills stated the finished cloud migration will present nib with an expansive atmosphere that may be dialed-up or down, which can also be price environment friendly and permits higher member knowledge analytics.
“The transfer may be very a lot a strategic resolution on many fronts,” he stated.
“We’re assured concerning the atmosphere; AWS supplies us with agility and suppleness, and permits nib to construct functionality in the way in which we function our enterprise and include prices.”
SEE: The cloud computing future, according to Gartner
AI use instances being explored throughout nib’s enterprise
nib expects the cloud to permit it to broaden 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 quite a few 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, prepare and deploy machine studying fashions, whereas Lex is a managed AI service for constructing conversational interfaces.