The world’s leading strata insurance firm claims success in the cloud with DSG.
CHU Underwriting Agencies Pty Ltd (CHU) started trading in Sydney in 1978. Today, more than 38 years on, CHU is recognised as the world’s leading strata insurance specialist, underwriting more than 100,000 schemes across Australia. The company has 160 users spread across 5 different offices in Australia: New South Wales, South Australia, Victoria, Western Australia and Queensland, plus a small office operating out of Manila.
DATA SOLUTIONS GROUP CASE STUDY / CHU UNDERWRITING AGENCIES
CHU were driven to consider the cloud for a number of reasons, but mainly because the IT infrastructure they were using prior to migrating with Data Solutions Group (DSG) was outdated and was not able to support their growing needs.
Challenges • Develop stand-alone IT system as a result of business sale • Move away from traditional in-house infrastructure into cloud environment • Achieve the migration under tight time constraints
Ben Caton is based in CHU’s flagship Sydney office and as their Vendor Manager was responsible for finding the right partner to assist with their cloud migration. “In my time at CHU there have been some major changes implemented. The most significant was when CHU changed ownership in April 2015. As part of this change, we decided to move all our IT systems to Amazon Web Services. Through various recommendations, we engaged DSG to help us with this IT migration.
DATA SOLUTIONS GROUP CASE STUDY / CHU UNDERWRITING AGENCIES
The whole of our infrastructure used to be maintained on-premise. We wanted to move away from this – from the traditional, clunky, in house systems and migrate everything to the cloud.”
The process DSG did a great job of getting us up to where we wanted to be within this timeframe. They were thrown in at the deep end but managed to help get us there.
As with all migrations of such magnitude, there were many challenges that Ben and his team needed to manage: “The time constraint was the big thing. We had a very aggressive timeline for the migration to be implemented. We had to be migrated to AWS by a particular date or we’d be liable for other fees, a lot of money, so we pushed it all through within nine months and went live.
DSG did a great job of getting us up to where we wanted to be within this timeframe. They were thrown in at the deep end but managed to help get us there.”
The Solution • Full data centre migration to AWS • Managed cloud services • Application delivery (Citrix over AWS) • Office 365
DATA SOLUTIONS GROUP CASE STUDY / CHU UNDERWRITING AGENCIES
The results One massive benefit of CHU’s migration to the cloud is that Ben and his team now have lots more transparency and control over their IT systems.
“The internal servers weren’t flexible, and services were at times restrictive on our users, and created lots of unnecessary processes. Now we are not jumping through ten different sign offs, we have gained lots more control and can be much more agile as a result.” Financially, it has also been a winner for the team at CHU: “We have saved lots with this migration too. DSG provided us with a great model – all on demand – we pay for what we use, which suits our business needs perfectly.”
DATA SOLUTIONS GROUP CASE STUDY / CHU UNDERWRITING AGENCIES
Now we are not jumping through ten different sign offs, we have gained lots more control and can be much more agile as a result.
Final thoughts? As with many clients in this field, Ben feels that customer service is paramount in such situations, as internal teams are working so closely with the IT migration department.
“The whole team we worked with at DSG has always been really honest and completely approachable. They dedicated a lot of personal time to us; they would drop everything and give us a hand if something went wrong. And even though we realise they look after lots of other clients, they make us feel important. They have given us a lot of support over the past nine months, and continue to be on hand to provide their pockets of knowledge and expertise whenever we need them.�
DATA SOLUTIONS GROUP CASE STUDY / CHU UNDERWRITING AGENCIES
They dedicated a lot of personal time to us; they would drop everything and give us a hand if something went wrong.