Aviva Insurance choose Origina to implement Infrastructure

Consolidation

Introduction:

The new solution has successfully consolidated the IT infrastructures of Norwich Union and Aviva Insurance Group. It has enabled increased operational efficiency for the Aviva group in Ireland. The solution has created a better management information system for the newly merged company, which in turn has enabled more effective financial management. This has provided Aviva with improved enterprise decision support with sophisticated analysis and reporting capabilities.

Project Summary:

IT Consolidation and Systems Integration are two key areas of expertise for Origina. We completed a major IT consolidation project for Aviva Insurance Group.  The merger of Aviva Insurance with Norwich Union resulted in there being two IT data centres in the new company, with multiple platforms and applications, multiple back-up procedures, policies, utilities, tape media etc. Having two IT infrastructures presented a huge logistical and technical challenge to merge both infrastructures into one. Origina were chosen as a key infrastructure partner to implement the consolidation project.

The Challenges / Issues:

What Aviva needed was a platform to allow them to consolidate applications such as Oracle 11i Financials, Filenet and Cogos Datawarehouse. They also needed some of these applications built in a highly available infrastructure with centralised backup and recovery of their data.

The Solution:

The solution Origina implemented involved; IBM pSeries and xSeries Servers, some running in a high availability configuration; depending on the needs of the particular application. IBM SSA Disk Storage and an IBM 3494 Tape Storage Library were installed to provide a consolidated data storage environment. In order to manage the vast and complex data storage management needs of Aviva, Origina implemented Tivoli Storage Manager Software, which manages and controls the backup and recovery of all the company's data.

The Business Benefits:

The solution has provided Aviva with the following business benefits:

• The IT infrastructure has been consolidated into a single data centre and it is a stable and supported environment.
• The mission critical applications are set up to provide near zero down time
• The solution is a highly flexible environment with LAN and SAN back up provided. There is a reduced back-up window for the company's data. In other words the amount of time it takes to make a back-up copy of the company's data has been much reduced, and the amount of time it takes to retrieve information from the company's storage systems has also been significantly reduced.
• Proven data recovery procedures in terms of a disaster recovery situation
• Improved asset utilisation the new systems take less people to administer and also reduces the amount of potential for user error. IT staff can spend their time more productively than monitoring the systems or doing mundane tasks.
• The new consolidated system involved extensive re-use of existing technology, and also is scalable, so more processing power or capacity can be added seamlessly at any time as the company's needs grow. Utilising existing technology has added to cost effectiveness of the solution the amount of new technology needing to be purchased was kept to a minimum.

"Reliability was probably the most crucial issue for us in terms of developing our new technology infrastructure. Some of the vital applications need to up and running virtually 24 hours a day, 365 days a year."

Paul O'Leary
IT Technical Infrastructure Manager
Aviva Group

"Any failure or downtime would be catastrophic in terms of lost revenue and lost productivity. The fact that Origina were able to demonstrate the ability to build a high availability system providing 24/7 uptime was a major factor in our decision to partner with them."

"The new system takes up fewer resources, both in terms of time and money, and reduces the amount of potential for user error.  Staff who would have been in charge of this until now can spend their time on other, more productive, tasks," said O'Leary.

"This was one of the largest and most complex projects that we have undertaken to date, in terms of the differing type of technology that were involved, and the various functions that were required of the new IT infrastructure. However, we believe the solution has significantly increased operational efficiency for the Aviva Group in Ireland. The solution has created a better management information system for the newly merged company, which in turn has enabled more effective financial management. This has provided Aviva with improved enterprise decision support with sophisticated analysis and reporting capabilities."

Tomás O'Leary
Managing Director
Origina

Why choose Origina?

• Aviva needed to deal with a company that could provide them with a very high skills pool and yet still be cost effective.
• Our ability to implement Oracle 11i Financials - this was the first ever implementation of Oracle 11i in Ireland and only Origina had the necessary skills and reference sites with implementing Oracle technology to be capable of doing the project. Oracle 11i Financials is a financial management application that is designed to work seamlessly with the Internet and web enabled applications.
• Our ability to build a high availability system providing 24 x 7 round the clock uptime was an important requirement for Aviva. Some of the company's vital applications need to up and running virtually 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and a system failure would be catastrophic in terms of lost revenue and lost productivity. In order to make sure that these mission critical systems were guaranteed to remain available they had to be built in a highly available environment, which means that there is a high level of fault tolerance and reliability built in to the solution. Origina have implemented high availability solutions for many customers and so were ideally placed to provide this skill set to Aviva.
• Origina’s ability to implement a scalable operating system in this case IBM's AIX.
• Another area where the newly merged company had a significant requirement was the company's data. The consolidated environment had to be an enterprise wide solution with multi-platform (multi operating system) support, yet with centralised control. Another issue that was very important for the company was data management; because there was now twice as much data to manage as previously the need for reducing the speed of backing-up and restoring the company's data whilst increasing the flexibility and scalability of the of the IT system was a major challenge.

"The fact that Origina were able to demonstrate the ability to build a high availability system providing 24/7 uptime was a major factor in our decision to partner with them."

Paul O'Leary
IT Technical Infrastructure Manager
Aviva Group

Click here to see our full list of IT solution case studies