Australian well being insurer nib’s cloud migration began in 2015. Nonetheless, 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 Companies and the remaining 5% to different cloud platforms.
nib Chief Info Officer Brendan Mills mentioned venture prioritisation proved to be a problem, with IT balancing growth-related enterprise initiatives alongside the migration. He mentioned the completed venture positions nib effectively for utilizing AI, which is being piloted for quite a few use circumstances.
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 Prime-100 ASX-listed non-public well being insurer. With a bunch income of AUD $1.7 billion final 12 months (US $1.1 billion), it gives 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 be:
- An Australian high three participant and international distributor of journey insurance coverage.
- A number one supplier of medical insurance for worldwide college students and staff in Australia, the place it insures round 200,000 worldwide college students and staff.
- Has an curiosity in Australia’s Nationwide Incapacity Insurance coverage Scheme, the place it has accomplished a number of acquisitions and helps 40,000 contributors 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 providers 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 important. The venture wanted to think about key dangers resembling paying insurance coverage in a well timed method to clients, safeguarding buyer information and minimising threat for traders.
Why did nib determine to maneuver every little thing to the cloud?
nib first began to experiment with the cloud in late 2015. Mills mentioned 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 might 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 progress, together with the operation of a big journey insurance coverage arm, nib had seven disparate information centres; one among these was nib-owned, whereas the others had been a mix of co-located information centres.
“We noticed the advantages of a extra centered funding in know-how that may profit our clients, 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 insurance enterprise GU Well being to AWS. This marked a big improve in its use of cloud providers, and one of many Australian medical insurance business’s earliest migrations of an insurance coverage system of file to the cloud in Australia.
By way of the ultimate levels of the migration, nib has moved different a number of Excessive Inherent Danger methods. “By transferring these EIR methods, we’ve additional fortified our know-how spine, guaranteeing that essential operations are operating on superior and resilient platforms,” Mills mentioned.
Key learnings from nib’s epic cloud migration venture
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 mentioned the remaining 5% of its workloads are supported by different cloud suppliers and SaaS methods. These are among the learnings from this cloud migration venture.
Select a cloud supplier aligned together with your cloud technique
Mills mentioned AWS was chosen because the well being insurer’s major cloud companion on the again of its product set, its scale and its sturdy capacity to companion with clients. nib is sustaining a 5% toehold with different suppliers as a deliberate technique to offer it with future optionality.
This was a consideration for nib in addition to insurance coverage regulator APRA, who’s absolutely aligned with nib’s strategy. “I’m not suggesting we are going to up our tent and transfer campground, however a few of these purposes have been refactored, and now we have some optionality round a few of these.”
Inside prioritisation can place strain on venture timeframes
The largest venture subject was the momentum and prioritisation hurdles encountered after the venture began in 2017. Mills admitted that “we might have preferred this to occur earlier,” though nib was nonetheless taking a really methodical and risk-conscious strategy to the venture.
Mills defined that it’s typically “laborious to get government colleagues enthusiastic about cloud migration” and that cloud and infrastructure was by no means seen as a purpose to not assist enterprise progress. This meant balancing priorities between different enterprise know-how wants and the migration.
Working with regulators can require vital time funding
nib labored carefully with APRA to fulfill its stringent cloud adoption requirements and necessities. That is thought of essential for methods of file, which preserve data important for an establishment to find out its obligations to clients and counterparties.
Mills mentioned nib spent a variety 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 steering. He mentioned, whereas he wouldn’t name this tough, “there was a variety of it.”
SEE: The challenges and advantages of cloud migration
Count on technical challenges as merchandise and purposes evolve
There have been some technical elements encountered all through the venture; Mills mentioned this occurred in some circumstances the place a product set had developed or purposes wanted refactoring. Nonetheless, he mentioned the enterprise went in with “eyes large open” to those potentialities.
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 mentioned this sees the enterprise sitting down “shoulder to shoulder” with AWS to have a look at cloud spending by means of a finops lens to optimise and guarantee it’s “paying for the precise issues.”
What advantages does nib anticipate after its cloud migration?
Mills mentioned the finished cloud migration will present nib with an expansive surroundings that may be dialed-up or down, which can be value environment friendly and permits higher member information analytics.
“The transfer may be very a lot a strategic determination on many fronts,” he mentioned.
“We’re assured in regards to the surroundings; AWS supplies us with agility and adaptability, and permits nib to construct functionality in the way in which we function our enterprise and comprise prices.”
SEE: The cloud computing future, in accordance with Gartner
AI use circumstances being explored throughout nib’s enterprise
nib expects the cloud to permit it to increase its present use and future exploration of synthetic intelligence. The well being insurer is already experimenting with or deploying use circumstances 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 providers, 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.
