GEICO, a direct auto insurer since 1936 and now the second-largest private-passenger auto insurer in the United States, is enhancing its digital presence to better connect with customers through multiple digital venues. With the assistance of trusted technology advisors including Applied Information Sciences, GEICO has adopted an aggressive hybrid-cloud course from legacy infrastructure to the cloud to thrive in the fast-moving digital insurance marketplace.<\/p>\n
As the leading direct writer in the auto insurance industry, GEICO is always looking for innovative ways to reach and delight customers. However, as any online merchant can attest, there\u2019s no standing still on the Internet.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the last five to eight years, the customer appetite for digital engagement has grown enormously,\u201d says Fikri Larguet, Director of Cloud Services at GEICO, referring to the rise of the mobile Internet and the explosion in social media participation. \u201cCustomers are engaging with us much more frequently and in new and interesting ways. We want to be ahead of the curve when it comes to where the next digital engagement opportunities will occur.\u201d<\/p>\n
In today\u2019s digital engagement model, the optimal experience for a customer includes 24\/7 availability and a continuous release of capabilities that make transactions faster and easier. DevOps development methodology and moving to the cloud are helping GEICO make that happen.<\/p>\n
GEICO chose to partner with Microsoft because \u201cwe see how aggressively Microsoft is moving into the cloud space and we\u2019re impressed with how quickly the Microsoft Azure offering is maturing,\u201d says Larguet. \u201cThe platform-as-a-service concept was really revolutionary with regard to what we wanted to achieve\u2014a customization-free infrastructure that provides more agility in provisioning and operating our digital assets.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Larguet, what was most important was that Microsoft extended a very welcome hand to GEICO. \u201cMicrosoft really listened and paid attention when we pointed out gaps in Azure and then it worked to fill them,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
GEICO had previously worked with Applied Information Sciences (AIS), a software and systems services provider with expertise in the cloud, DevOps, and application modernization, and the insurer brought AIS in to help with its cloud applications. There was a great deal of work to be done, both in terms of rewriting software and eliminating inefficiencies<\/p>\n
AIS worked with GEICO to eliminate roadblocks by helping to develop more streamlined and automated procedures around infrastructure and application deployment, lifecycle management, application monitoring, and high-availability testing. \u201cAutomation created an on-ramp to Azure for us and resulted in a great deal of increased productivity,\u201d Larguet says.<\/p>\n
In late 2014, Larguet\u2019s boss asked him to build a cloud implementation of any GEICO business system he chose. \u201cYou probably want to start small, but you need to get it done in less than a year,\u201d said his boss. Larguet\u2019s team had been testing Azure platform-as-a-service (PaaS) tools, but the team had not made them enterprise-ready.<\/p>\n
Larguet thought long and hard about the assignment, talked to his team, and came back to his boss with a higher-stakes counterproposal. \u201cIf we\u2019re going to do this, let\u2019s go big,\u201d he said. \u201cLet\u2019s gradually move to the cloud in hybrid fashion so we can uncover anything and everything we\u2019re going to encounter in moving big production applications to Azure. For all the effort this is going to take, let\u2019s get big returns,\u201d says Larguet.<\/p>\n
With software development now happening in Azure, GEICO has seen a substantial speedup in its innovation cycle. \u201cWith DevOps and Azure, we\u2019re able to reduce our new-feature release cycle down to one week, and we think we can even speed that up,\u201d Larguet says.<\/p>\n
That acceleration comes from faster provisioning of development resources and from reallocating engineers from standing up infrastructure to developing new customer engagement models. With its nimble cloud infrastructure, GEICO can test and refine ideas faster, which helps it improve the customer experience at a faster cadence.<\/p>\n
By moving its tier-1 business systems to Azure, GEICO has also eliminated much of the downtime that used to accompany new-feature rollouts, which could be devastating to an online business. Today, GEICO deploys and tests in one US Azure datacenter and runs production applications in another. Customers never see any downtime due to software updates.<\/p>\n
The move to Azure also accelerated GEICO\u2019s ability to execute its disaster recovery plan. Application development teams now have real-time data to support application monitoring, troubleshooting, and incident resolution.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince moving to Azure, service interruptions are fewer, which we consider critical in delivering a great online experience,\u201d Larguet says. \u201cWe\u2019re always working to have a business continuity architecture that delivers unprecedented stability and peace of mind.\u201d<\/p>\n
GEICO has also reduced costs with Azure by reducing the labor required to set up and manage infrastructure.<\/p>\n
GEICO continues to work closely with Microsoft to optimize and accelerate its cloud capabilities to benefit policyholders. \u201cBy partnering with Microsoft, we have a seat at the table in determining how Microsoft helps us automate and build infrastructure in the cloud and how we pay for it,\u201d Larguet says. \u201cIt\u2019s very exciting to be part of this cloud revolution.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
GEICO has adopted an aggressive hybrid-cloud course from legacy infrastructure to the cloud to thrive in the fast-moving digital insurance marketplace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":843,"featured_media":10352,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1523,4255],"post_tag":[],"content-type":[1490],"coauthors":[4311],"class_list":["post-2444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-financial-services","category-insurance","content-type-customer-stories"],"yoast_head":"\n