The Client & Project Background
A global commercial insurance and reinsurance group relied on an ageing, compliance-critical catastrophe modelling platform hosted in a legacy data centre which was deeply constrained by legacy hardware, software and data architecture. The client was facing a non-negotiable data centre exit deadline requiring successful platform migration, regardless of complexity.
Multiple previous migration attempts had failed, both internally and with external support. The platform handled hundreds of terabytes of critical data and could not tolerate downtime.
The client engaged ECMS to assess whether the migration was feasible and to define a migration approach while providing senior technical architecture leadership to support a high-risk, previously unsuccessful migration. The brief required restoring confidence at senior leadership level that the migration was feasible, despite:
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The scale, data volumes and operational constraints involved
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The hard exit deadline which required a pragmatic execution approach, since there was zero tolerance for extended downtime due to compliance and operational constraints
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Physical limitations to using traditional migration approaches, as simple copy methods were infeasible
Approach & Solution
To ensure successful cloud migration, ECMS:
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Conducted end-to-end analysis
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Analysed the full application stack, including infrastructure, data and data centre dependencies, resulting in an options paper for client consideration
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Defined a multi-phase migration approach
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Planned the transition from physical hardware to virtualised on-premises infrastructure, then to cloud
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Designed and executed the approach across all phases, coordinating multiple technical disciplines under tight time and risk constraints
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Led the technical execution, collaborating with programme management and specialist infrastructure resources
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Supported testing, stabilisation, and transition activities post-migration
“ECMS delivered successful migration of a compliance-critical platform, resulting in key processes ultimately taking two instead of twenty minutes.”
Key Outcomes
The project led to successful migration of a previously immovable, compliance-critical platform within the required timeframe, and the completion of the data centre exit without unplanned disruption.
Further outcomes:
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Accelerated key processing jobs to run ten times faster, from twenty-minute to two-minute processing time once the cloud migration was complete
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Assured platform resilience through high-volume stress testing without failure
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Improved confidence from technology leadership following multiple historical failed attempts
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Reduced operational and compliance risk associated with legacy infrastructure, yielding a more stable, performant platform while longer-term replacement or rebuild options are evaluated
Reduced operational risk, restored confidence, and enabled future modernisation
Migrated hundreds of terabytes of legacy data with zero downtime required
Assured platform resilience through high-volume stress testing without failure