Esurance: Offering a Configurable Insurance Distribution Platform for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises
esurance is a Swiss InsurTech company that offers a configurable insurance distribution platform for small and medium-sized enterprises. Although much of the software development lifecycle has already been automated by developers, esurance’s infrastructure deployment remained manual, requiring specialized teams and causing operational overhead.
The Problem
While much of the software development lifecycle has already been automated by developers, esurance’s infrastructure has remained a largely manual process that required specialized teams and caused operational overhead. With the demands made on today’s infrastructure, ever-growing customer base, and new products, it has become increasingly crucial to implement infrastructure deployment automation. The customer understood that infrastructure had become a bottleneck in their effective code deployment process.
Solution and Architecture
Cloudvisor, as an advanced AWS partner specializing in DevOps projects, designed a new, cost-effective, highly scalable, and secure architecture in AWS integrating many general cloud governance and DevOps practices.
GitOps was used to automate the process of provisioning infrastructure. Similar to how teams use application source code, operations teams that adopt GitOps use configuration files stored as code (Infrastructure-as-Code). GitOps configuration files generate the same infrastructure environment every time it’s deployed, just as the application source code generates the same application binaries every time it’s built.
Now developers change the code of their current environment by creating a new branch and the pipeline is triggered automatically once the merge request is made to the dev or prod branch. This makes developers work more productively, as once they make changes to the application code, they will see the effect immediately in any chosen environment and remove the infrastructure deployment headache.
The project scope included full-scale migration from traditional infrastructure in the private cloud to AWS Cloud. Core applications from a hosted dedicated Kubernetes cluster have been moved to AWS EKS cluster; databases were migrated to Amazon RDS with read-replicas for read performance management and multiAZ deployment to increase reliability. Message queue management was implemented using Amazon MQ service. Encryption in transit and at rest has been enabled for every infrastructure component.
Replication and backup mechanisms were created to comply with the customer’s availability and resiliency requirements. Health monitoring and alerting were implemented with the help of AWS Container Insights and AWS CloudWatch. Cloud governance and security were implemented using AWS Config, AWS CloudTrail, and AWS GuardDuty services.
Metrics for Success
The customer faced several challenges in their infrastructure deployment process, affecting their ability to meet their business objectives. They were using traditional infrastructure management methods, which resulted in long deployment times, increased operational burden, and a lack of control over security and governance.
To address these challenges, the customer turned to AWS Cloud and partnered with Cloudvisor, a trusted partner in cloud management services. Together, they implemented DevOps practices such as Infrastructure as Code, version control, and CI/CD to improve their infrastructure deployment process.
With AWS Cloud, the customer could leverage the benefits of cloud computing, including on-demand scalability, high availability, and cost optimization. Cloudvisor helped them design and implement a robust cloud infrastructure that was flexible, resilient, and secure.
By using DevOps practices, the customer was able to reduce their infrastructure deployment times by five times, which allowed them to focus on higher-value tasks and meet their business objectives faster. They also reduced their operational burden by automating their deployment process, which resulted in fewer errors and increased reliability. Overall, the combination of AWS Cloud, Cloudvisor as a partner, and DevOps practices enabled the customer to achieve their infrastructure goals, reduce costs, and focus on higher-value tasks.
Ready To Find Out Why Over 500+ Startups Like esurance Trust Cloudvisor?
esurance chose to work with us because we think like a startup and have a leading DevOps team. We understand startups’ unique pain points and the importance of rapidly adopting effective solutions without getting bogged down in unnecessary bureaucracy.
How can we help you take your AWS implementation to the next level? Schedule a call with our team today and discover it! Contact Cloudvisor today and get the most out of AWS.
