Microsoft Azure (Microsoft) Case Studies AIA Singapore's Performance Enhancement and Cost Efficiency with Azure

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	AIA Singapore's Performance Enhancement and Cost Efficiency with Azure Microsoft Azure (Microsoft)

AIA Singapore's Performance Enhancement and Cost Efficiency with Azure

Microsoft Azure (Microsoft)

Technology Category	Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Event-Driven Application Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Application Development Platforms
Applicable Industries	Construction & Infrastructure E-Commerce
Applicable Functions	Maintenance Product Research & Development
Use Cases	Construction Management Usage-Based Insurance
Services	Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services System Integration
Challenge	AIA Singapore, a subsidiary of AIA Group Limited, is a leader in life insurance and financial services. The company has been serving generations of Singaporeans since 1931. AIA Singapore had moved many of its vital Java-based workloads to Azure, including an interactive point of sale (iPoS) system. However, the company faced challenges with unpredictable spikes in traffic and underutilized on-premises servers. The company wanted to improve the scalability of the system and attract Singapore’s top technical talent. AIA Singapore also wanted to create more robust web experiences and more innovative digital tools to provide customers with the best service experiences. The company's legacy Sybase database could no longer support the new kinds of big data business intelligence. Scaling up capacity in AIA Singapore’s existing on-premises environment was costly and left a lot of underutilized server capacity. Read More
About Customer	AIA Singapore is a subsidiary of AIA Group Limited, a leader in life insurance and financial services with branches and subsidiaries across 18 Asia-Pacific markets. Since 1931, AIA Singapore has been serving generations of Singaporeans, supporting them throughout their lives. The company is recognized for its leadership in business technology. AIA Singapore has been continuously transforming to meet the evolving needs of customers. The company is committed to enabling “Healthier, Longer, Better Lives,” propelling AIA Singapore to launch innovative solutions that truly support their physical and financial well-being. AIA Singapore helps customers plan ahead to ensure that they are protected financially, while growing their wealth for retirement and empowering them to lead an active and healthy life. Read More
Solution	AIA Singapore chose Azure for its ambitious plan to transform and further enhance all its platforms. Azure provided resilience, autoscaling features, on-demand provisioning, open-source options, and built-in high availability and disaster recovery. The company moved to Apache Tomcat, an open-source implementation of the web server environment in which Java code can run. This enabled AIA Singapore to take advantage of containers and Kubernetes. The company also implemented a hybrid configuration, which gave AIA Singapore the flexibility to move at a quicker pace that worked for the business. AIA Singapore also set up an Azure ExpressRoute circuit between Azure and its on-premises datacenter. For business continuity, AIA Singapore mirrors its primary Azure datacenter, located in Singapore, in a secondary region in Hong Kong. The company also migrated the on-premises Sybase database to Azure SQL Managed Instance as part of the application refactoring process. Read More Log in to view content
Contents

Technology Category

Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Event-Driven Application

Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Application Development Platforms

Applicable Industries

Construction & Infrastructure

E-Commerce

Applicable Functions

Maintenance

Product Research & Development

Use Cases

Construction Management

Usage-Based Insurance

Services

Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services

System Integration

Challenge

AIA Singapore, a subsidiary of AIA Group Limited, is a leader in life insurance and financial services. The company has been serving generations of Singaporeans since 1931. AIA Singapore had moved many of its vital Java-based workloads to Azure, including an interactive point of sale (iPoS) system. However, the company faced challenges with unpredictable spikes in traffic and underutilized on-premises servers. The company wanted to improve the scalability of the system and attract Singapore’s top technical talent. AIA Singapore also wanted to create more robust web experiences and more innovative digital tools to provide customers with the best service experiences. The company's legacy Sybase database could no longer support the new kinds of big data business intelligence. Scaling up capacity in AIA Singapore’s existing on-premises environment was costly and left a lot of underutilized server capacity.

About Customer

AIA Singapore is a subsidiary of AIA Group Limited, a leader in life insurance and financial services with branches and subsidiaries across 18 Asia-Pacific markets. Since 1931, AIA Singapore has been serving generations of Singaporeans, supporting them throughout their lives. The company is recognized for its leadership in business technology. AIA Singapore has been continuously transforming to meet the evolving needs of customers. The company is committed to enabling “Healthier, Longer, Better Lives,” propelling AIA Singapore to launch innovative solutions that truly support their physical and financial well-being. AIA Singapore helps customers plan ahead to ensure that they are protected financially, while growing their wealth for retirement and empowering them to lead an active and healthy life.

Solution

AIA Singapore chose Azure for its ambitious plan to transform and further enhance all its platforms. Azure provided resilience, autoscaling features, on-demand provisioning, open-source options, and built-in high availability and disaster recovery. The company moved to Apache Tomcat, an open-source implementation of the web server environment in which Java code can run. This enabled AIA Singapore to take advantage of containers and Kubernetes. The company also implemented a hybrid configuration, which gave AIA Singapore the flexibility to move at a quicker pace that worked for the business. AIA Singapore also set up an Azure ExpressRoute circuit between Azure and its on-premises datacenter. For business continuity, AIA Singapore mirrors its primary Azure datacenter, located in Singapore, in a secondary region in Hong Kong. The company also migrated the on-premises Sybase database to Azure SQL Managed Instance as part of the application refactoring process.

Impact #1	The migration to Azure has allowed AIA Singapore to accelerate the delivery of new and more innovative services to its customers while further increasing the productivity of its AIA Insurance Representatives with the latest Azure cloud–native technologies. The company's new Azure architecture reflects the Zero Trust model, which locks down access to resources from both inside and outside of the network. This concept is critical to prevent attackers from pivoting laterally and elevating access within an environment. The company also implemented a hub-and-spoke topology, a networking model for efficiently managing security requirements. The hub virtual network centralizes services that can be shared by multiple workloads. The spoke virtual networks can host different types of workloads, providing a separation of concerns for different groups within the company.

Impact #1

The migration to Azure has allowed AIA Singapore to accelerate the delivery of new and more innovative services to its customers while further increasing the productivity of its AIA Insurance Representatives with the latest Azure cloud–native technologies. The company's new Azure architecture reflects the Zero Trust model, which locks down access to resources from both inside and outside of the network. This concept is critical to prevent attackers from pivoting laterally and elevating access within an environment. The company also implemented a hub-and-spoke topology, a networking model for efficiently managing security requirements. The hub virtual network centralizes services that can be shared by multiple workloads. The spoke virtual networks can host different types of workloads, providing a separation of concerns for different groups within the company.

Benefit #1	In the first six months of the migration, AIA Singapore moved its cornerstone iPoS application, in addition to several dozen high-profile Java-based business workloads.
Benefit #2	The developers also used Azure tools to build an all-new e-commerce experience that debuted during the COVID-19 pandemic, expanding the company’s digital reach when customers needed help the most.

Benefit #1

In the first six months of the migration, AIA Singapore moved its cornerstone iPoS application, in addition to several dozen high-profile Java-based business workloads.

Benefit #2

The developers also used Azure tools to build an all-new e-commerce experience that debuted during the COVID-19 pandemic, expanding the company’s digital reach when customers needed help the most.

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Overview

AIA Singapore's Performance Enhancement and Cost Efficiency with Azure

Operational Impact

Quantitative Benefit