Insurance business Canopius needed to upgrade its technical infrastructure. They chose to migrate away from dual datacentres to Microsoft Azure, leveraging native tooling, including Azure VMware Solution.
The business now has a stable technology infrastructure that enables improved cost management and scalability and opens up new opportunities for innovation using responsible AI and Microsoft Copilot.
Canopius is a global insurance and reinsurance business. Founded in December 2003, with £25m equity capital and achieved significant growth through a mix of organic expansion and acquisition, Canopius is privately owned, backed by private equity funding. The business operates in Australia, Bermuda, Singapore, the UK, the US, Malaysia (Labuan) and China (through Lloyd’s China). The company’s high-quality data is its secret sauce and leveraging that data fully is seen to deliver significant competitive advantage.
The Canopius technology leadership team felt that the existing business technology infrastructure was a drag on speed, agility and future innovation opportunities. To maximise the competitive advantage from the data it holds, Canopius wanted to migrate from dual datacentres to a more agile, cost-effective and geographically scalable cloud environment.
“The challenge we had in our previous environment,” explains Jonathan Hogg, Head of IT Service Management at Canopius, “was around cost management and the availability of our global platform.”
Graeme Phillips, Chief Information Officer at Canopius expands, “The ‘stick or twist’ moment came when we thought: do we just go ahead with our normal hardware refresh or do we put the foundations in place that will allow us to use all the upcoming technologies when it comes to Microsoft Copilot, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and positioning the data where we need it to be to operate in different territories.”
The Canopius team recognised that a migration to Microsoft Azure would better facilitate its ambitions across its international markets, as well as providing the right basis for future innovations, especially around AI. By moving to Azure, the team could focus on value-add activities that directly benefit the business and its customers, rather than managing infrastructure.
In 2023, it began a migration project which leveraged many native Azure services to ease and hasten the migration process. More than 500 servers were migrated to Azure over a six-month period.
“Microsoft introduced us to various products that would make the migration easier,” Robert Welburn, Senior Project Manager at Canopius, explains. “Our relationship with Microsoft has enabled us to move very seamlessly. Canopius does not see itself as a technology infrastructure owner – we benefit from Azure taking care of that – while we own the processing.”
Robert Welburn adds, “The ability to process that data quickly is what is key to Azure.”
Being able to leverage its data with the scalability, agility, elasticity and cost-effectiveness of Microsoft Azure brings significant competitive advantage. It is a big culture change for Canopius – as well as for the insurance industry more generally, which has been typically characterised by legacy tech.
Now, Canopius can respond faster to market and business needs. People can be more curious and ask more questions of the data. Graeme Phillips says, “The ability to react to changing market conditions in the quickest time possible will really give us the leverage we need to succeed in the industry.”
And this is only the start! New innovations around leading-edge AI technologies, including Microsoft GitHub Copilot, Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft Security and Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 are being explored. Robert Welburn explains, “There are a lot of teams that are excited about the benefits that AI could bring and Copilot can bring to our understanding of our data – and being able to do things that weren’t possible previously.”
“The migration has really set the foundation to enable Canopius to adopt the next set of technologies, particularly generative AI,” Jonathan Hogg agrees. “The migration to Azure puts Canopius in a position to not only continue to meet our regulatory and security obligations but also to meet our business innovation requirements and be able to adopt the improvements and innovations that Microsoft can bring through Azure and other layers, including Copilot.”
Graeme Phillips concludes: “Innovation is what separates you as a company. With the move to Azure, we now have the foundations in place to really drive that innovation.”
“Innovation is what separates you as a company. With the move to Azure, we now have the foundations in place to really drive that innovation.”
Graeme Phillips, Chief Information Officer, Canopius Group
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