The key to business agility at Swiss Re is greater efficiency—and a Cloud Center of Excellence

More than a great public cloud

Regulatory requirements, such as data sovereignty, led Swiss Re to create its private cloud in Switzerland, where it is headquartered, rather than choose a public cloud. In 2019, Microsoft launched its Swiss data center for Azure, which met the reinsurer’s regulatory needs and provided other advantages. These included Microsoft-level security, standardization, continual enhancement, lower cost, and the sustainability benefit of a cloud operated to Microsoft’s demanding environmental standards. But Swiss Re wanted more than a public cloud. The company wanted its operations in the cloud to deliver the speed, agility, and dependability to power its continued business innovation and growth, including its entry into entirely new products and services. 

That’s why, in March 2020, Swiss Re announced a broad strategic alliance with Microsoft. One of the twin goals of that alliance is the creation of a cloud-based Core Operating Platform (COP) that will enable Swiss Re to optimize its IT services for a cloud-native approach. The COP will also provide an optimized foundation for the company’s new products and services, as well as a solid, agile base from which to drive digital markets.

Coaching its way out of an engagement

The cloud-based COP and the Azure technology that runs it are important to Swiss Re, but the company sees the Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE), as prescribed in the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework, as even more important to deliver sustainable value. As part of the alliance, Microsoft and Swiss Re jointly established and staffed the CCoE within Swiss Re to guide the company in its development, management, and operation of its solutions on public cloud platforms. Microsoft guides and coaches Swiss Re staff, turning CCoE functions over to the company’s staff so it can assume full responsibility for the Operations. 

“The CCoE ensures we can manage the public cloud on our own as we mature in cloud expertise,” says Youngran Kim, Group Chief Technology Officer, Swiss Re. “It gives us a way not just to adopt the cloud, but to shift our culture to the full engineering and DevSecOps mindset that’s essential to success in the public cloud. And I say ‘public cloud’ rather than just ‘Azure’ because, while we rely on Azure, we can also use our DevSecOps and best practice expertise to integrate third-party clouds and apps, including innovative technology such as open source, as we wish.”

Together, Microsoft and Swiss Re identified the reinsurer’s existing cloud strengths and gaps and then tailored a skills training program. Microsoft experts showed Swiss Re teams how to apply best practices and adopt more agile ways of working and collaborating.

It’s all about the mindset

“I had thought Microsoft training would be purely technical, but this wasn’t,” says Mark Eley, Product Owner of CCoE at Swiss Re. “It focused on helping us adopt an agile mindset for the specific challenges we faced.” For example, Eley cites training from Microsoft about how and when to use automated testing to maintain quality while increasing speed. The initial focus is on training Swiss Re’s CCoE members and IT staff, who in turn can train business users such as application delivery teams, business product teams, and others. The company is using the Microsoft Enterprise Skills Initiative to provide each of its employees with training and certification resources, DevSecOps training, and education on more agile ways to work.

“We used to have a traditional approach to the role of IT as a central controller over how people use technology and the cloud in particular,” says Felix Craft, Program Manager for Cloud Transformation at Swiss Re. “Through the CCoE, Microsoft is helping us shift our culture to one where the standards are still centralized, but our business teams have much greater independence to unleash innovation.”

For example, Craft cites the standardization of security policies in CCoE templates and tools. Applications built with the CCoE guidance automatically meet Swiss Re’s security requirements, so security is enhanced, the apps can be certified more quickly and reliably than before, and apps teams have more time to focus on creating the best products.

Enabling cloud advocates  

Microsoft also worked with Swiss Re—and continues to do so—to support effective cloud advocacy throughout the organization. Microsoft provides that enablement through its Modern Service Management (MSM) for Azure program, which focuses on digital agility, DevOps, and modern patterns and practices to govern and drive the solutions that support digital transformation.  

For operating and governing the cloud environment, Microsoft conducted a fit-gap analysis with Swiss Re, providing an Azure governance model and an MSM transformation plan for the understanding of how to integrate the cloud service with existing processes. The broader MSM activities include an Operation Improvement Program and Cloud Governance Model, as well as a Service Management Control Framework within the CCoE.

Efficiency that promotes agility

The Core Operating Platform is on track to boost IT productivity by 40 percent in 2023, according to Kim, and by moving core operations to Azure, she and her colleagues also gain sustainability benefits over on-prem or private cloud venues. Kim also cites the impact that greater productivity has on the company’s business agility. 

“We can bring up an environment, run tests, and bring it down all in a day—it used to take a week or more,” Kim says. “That means we get to test and explore many more options than we could before, and truly find the best ones for us and our customers. That will be crucial as we expand into entirely new products and services.”