Ahead in the cloud: Insurer's technology and data transformed with a rapid cloud migration

A recent large acquisition had left Liberty Mutual with a problem – dated technology and a lot of data that needed integrating into its business in order for processes to run smoothly and deliver value to customers. It had approached a vendor to help migrate the acquisition's 31 applications to AWS as part of its wider digital-first approach to improve IT delivery and lower costs. Working together with the vendor, the client had hoped to manage the transfer quickly, but after eight months, only one application had moved. So Liberty turned to Genpact for help. Our work with the carrier on other projects had proved our digital credentials, plus we had worked with the acquired company in the past and knew its systems. But this new engagement was a real challenge now that valuable time had already elapsed. We had eight months to transfer the remaining applications and decommission the old data center – or miss a deadline that would cost the client millions.

We hit the ground running. Within a week we had built a team of internal cloud experts to accelerate the application transfer, augmented with external experts for the sprint effort. The solution was built using DevOps practices that accelerated the development and provided continuous delivery with high software quality. As a result, in just over a month we had migrated two applications three weeks ahead of schedule. The early win increased client confidence, so we boosted this with AWS training for Liberty employees so it could accelerate the transfer of applications in parallel with our work.

Using our technical and functional knowledge of the acquisition's systems, our DevOps practice, and a technology stack including CloudForge, Bitbucket, and Cloud Foundry, we completed the transfers with a month to spare, and have since shut down the legacy data center. We hit our target – much faster than the previous vendor could.

We accomplished Liberty's lead goal of migrating all 31 applications onto AWS ahead of schedule. And because we helped train its staff to become AWS experts too, app migration accelerated.

Full retirement of the data center plus license costs savings will save Liberty $7 million each year, with more in the pipeline. And because we delivered new in-house experts for free, we've saved the client an expensive hiring process and increased team morale.

In addition, the new digital-first system with its simplified IT architecture has improved performance, availability, and significantly enhanced user experience.

The big picture is also positive. Our setup and staff training means the client has greater flexibility to modernize and optimize applications. And now that Liberty has seen we can quickly deliver cloud projects within budget, it has asked us to do that job too.