Australian well being insurer nib’s cloud migration began in 2015. Nevertheless, it wasn’t till 9 years later, in 2024, that it was capable of full the migration of 100% of on-premise workloads, 95% to Amazon Net Companies and the remaining 5% to different cloud platforms.
nib Chief Data Officer Brendan Mills mentioned undertaking prioritisation proved to be a problem, with IT balancing growth-related enterprise tasks alongside the migration. He mentioned the completed undertaking positions nib effectively for utilizing AI, which is being piloted for numerous use instances.
SEE: Evaluating cloud choices? See our comparability of AWS with Google Cloud.
Who’s nib, and why is its cloud migration a giant deal?
Australia’s nib is a Prime-100 ASX-listed personal 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 prime 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 its nib Thrive enterprise.
- Maintains a majority stake in medtech organisation Midnight Well being, which has supplied entry to healthcare by telehealth providers 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 important. The undertaking wanted to think about key dangers similar to paying insurance coverage in a well timed method to clients, safeguarding buyer knowledge and minimising danger for buyers.
Why did nib determine to maneuver all the pieces 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 some great benefits of cloud computing
The shift to the cloud was not all by design. Via merger and acquisition exercise and progress, together with the operation of a big 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 targeted funding in expertise that will profit our clients, versus managing knowledge centres and infrastructure,” Mills defined.
Shifting a main insurance coverage system of document 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 providers, and one of many Australian medical insurance business’s earliest migrations of an insurance coverage system of document to the cloud in Australia.
Via the ultimate levels of the migration, nib has moved different a number of Excessive Inherent Threat techniques. “By transferring these EIR techniques, we’ve additional fortified our expertise spine, guaranteeing that important operations are operating on superior and resilient platforms,” Mills mentioned.
Key learnings from nib’s epic cloud migration undertaking
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 mentioned the remaining 5% of its workloads are supported by different cloud suppliers and SaaS techniques. These are among the learnings from this cloud migration undertaking.
Select a cloud supplier aligned along with your cloud technique
Mills mentioned AWS was chosen because the well being insurer’s main cloud accomplice on the again of its product set, its scale and its sturdy means to accomplice 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 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 have now some optionality round a few of these.”
Inner prioritisation can place strain on undertaking timeframes
The largest undertaking situation was the momentum and prioritisation hurdles encountered after the undertaking began in 2017. Mills admitted that “we’d have favored this to occur earlier,” regardless that nib was nonetheless taking a really methodical and risk-conscious method to the undertaking.
Mills defined that it’s usually “arduous 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 progress. This meant balancing priorities between different enterprise expertise wants and the migration.
Working with regulators can require vital time funding
nib labored carefully with APRA to satisfy its stringent cloud adoption requirements and necessities. That is thought of important for techniques of document, which keep info 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 info 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
Anticipate technical challenges as merchandise and functions evolve
There have been some technical elements encountered all through the undertaking; Mills mentioned this occurred in some instances the place a product set had developed or functions wanted refactoring. Nevertheless, he mentioned the enterprise went in with “eyes extensive 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 take a look at. Mills mentioned this sees the enterprise sitting down “shoulder to shoulder” with AWS to take a look at cloud spending by a finops lens to optimise and guarantee it’s “paying for the best issues.”
What advantages does nib anticipate after its cloud migration?
Mills mentioned the finished cloud migration will present nib with an expansive setting that may be dialed-up or down, which can also be value environment friendly and permits higher member knowledge analytics.
“The transfer could be very a lot a strategic determination on many fronts,” he mentioned.
“We’re assured in regards to the setting; AWS offers us with agility and suppleness, and permits nib to construct functionality in the best way we function our enterprise and include prices.”
SEE: The cloud computing future, in line with 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 numerous 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, prepare and deploy machine studying fashions, whereas Lex is a managed AI service for constructing conversational interfaces.
