Protective Insurance Drives Digital Transformation with Azure Synapse Analytics
For more than 90 years, Protective Insurance has responded to its clients with speed, efficiency, and deep expertise in the field. Specializing in large-scale transportation, its clients include some of the largest fleets in the trucking and package delivery industry, which operate with zero margin for error. For a company known for the reliability of its underwriting and claims processes, migrating to Microsoft Azure and embracing Azure Synapse Analytics meant enhancing existing strengths and discovering new opportunities to leverage its data.
DRIVING TRANSPORTATION & TRANSFORMATION:
Delivery drivers today have access to a vastly expanded set of tools and resources than they had decades ago in the CB radio era. This workforce is empowered by mobile platforms and expects instantaneous access to data. Protective Insurance recognized that to keep up, it needed an adaptable, future-proof data solution.
The challenge, as the company saw it, was to migrate data from the very legacy systems upon which it had built its reputation into a cloud platform that responded to the evolving expectations of its clients. Simply storing data wasn’t enough—the company recognized that it needed a better way to generate actionable insights, which in the past had been a laborious process. “Data is the second most important asset after our people,” said Bahr Omidfar, Chief Information Officer at Protective Insurance.
MIGRATING TO AZURE:
Time is of the essence when it comes to underwriting and claims, so Protective Insurance understandably wasn’t keen on a long, multiphase cloud migration process. What the company got with Azure was a comprehensive plan, Data Platform in 30 Days (DPi30), that included end-to-end platform deployment, enabling more timely and accurate underwriting, which in turn led to increased profitability.
Guided by dedicated Azure specialists during onsite sessions, the company initially chose to migrate just a portion of its claims data. This allowed Protective Insurance to take a small step before a giant leap and reassured the organization about the security of its data. When this test proved successful, it proceeded to transform its entire data platform.
Securely sharing data is crucial to success in the insurance industry. For Protective Insurance, this means keeping customer information safe while communicating with multiple external organizations.
It was also important to Protective Insurance to make smarter decisions by running models on its own unstructured data. Much of the unstructured data that agents gather in the field consists of still images and videos of accident scenes. When Protective Insurance started moving this data into Microsoft Azure Data Lake, the company discovered that Azure Synapse Analytics let it seamlessly incorporate data into its analytics strategy. “We had a lot of pictures of accidents, and we didn't know what to do with them. Now, we're able to actually run analytics on them in Data Lake. We started to really leverage our unstructured data,” said Omidfar.
DATA ON THE MOVE- TELEMETRY & TRANSPORTATION:
One crucial source of data comes telemetrically from the trucks themselves. When a customer watches the little icon of a delivery driver on their phone, they’re seeing a vast amount of information generated in real time. Storing, accessing, and acting on that data has traditionally been a heavy lift. Azure Synapse provided Protective Insurance the means to not only store telemetry data, but to better act on it.
As Omidfar puts it, “We get a lot of telematics data from the trucks that we insure, and it was just way too expensive to store it. And the compute requirements were also too expensive. Having a place where we can store it and run analytics on it that is cost-effective was really important to us.”
One way the company leveraged its telemetry data was to use Microsoft Power BI, a powerful business analytics service that allows users to generate visualizations and dashboards. Previously unwieldy data sets were now elegantly displayed, making the process of reviewing claims faster and more efficient.
USING DATA TO PREVENT ACCIDENTS BEFORE THEY HAPPEN:
Growth requires innovation. Azure Synapse gives Protective Insurance the ability to use machine learning to make correlations in data that wouldn’t have been possible before. In one instance, the company was able to dive deep into the data to identify a particularly dangerous intersection.
“We were looking at a graphical map of the most instances of head and neck injuries,” said Omidfar. “It was easier for us to actually identify the customers that drive through that intersection quite a bit and tell them to avoid it (during) certain times of day.
With Azure, we can actually help our customers drive more safely and keep the roads safer for the rest of us,” adds Omnidfar. “It’s really powerful how simple things can literally save people’s lives.”
DRIVING SAVINGS & NEW REVENUE WITH AZURE
Staying current, future-proofing infrastructure, and creating new opportunities for innovation are all part of the Protective Insurance story. What about reducing costs and driving new revenue?
Migrating the company’s infrastructure and data workloads to Azure is helping reduce capital expenditures and allowing the company to repurpose its existing datacenter for revenue-generating initiatives. The long-trusted company is now poised to grow with Azure Synapse Analytics. According to Omidfar, “Our plan now is in the next 50 weeks to move all of our data onto Azure, build our enterprise data warehouse using Azure Synapse, and build all of our data hubs and data stores on Azure.”
In today’s transportation industry, drivers deliver more than goods—they deliver data. Powered by Azure Synapse, Protective Insurance looks ahead and drives digital transformation.
DRIVING TRANSPORTATION & TRANSFORMATION:
Delivery drivers today have access to a vastly expanded set of tools and resources than they had decades ago in the CB radio era. This workforce is empowered by mobile platforms and expects instantaneous access to data. Protective Insurance recognized that to keep up, it needed an adaptable, future-proof data solution.
The challenge, as the company saw it, was to migrate data from the very legacy systems upon which it had built its reputation into a cloud platform that responded to the evolving expectations of its clients. Simply storing data wasn’t enough—the company recognized that it needed a better way to generate actionable insights, which in the past had been a laborious process. “Data is the second most important asset after our people,” said Bahr Omidfar, Chief Information Officer at Protective Insurance.
MIGRATING TO AZURE:
Time is of the essence when it comes to underwriting and claims, so Protective Insurance understandably wasn’t keen on a long, multiphase cloud migration process. What the company got with Azure was a comprehensive plan, Data Platform in 30 Days (DPi30), that included end-to-end platform deployment, enabling more timely and accurate underwriting, which in turn led to increased profitability.
Guided by dedicated Azure specialists during onsite sessions, the company initially chose to migrate just a portion of its claims data. This allowed Protective Insurance to take a small step before a giant leap and reassured the organization about the security of its data. When this test proved successful, it proceeded to transform its entire data platform.
Securely sharing data is crucial to success in the insurance industry. For Protective Insurance, this means keeping customer information safe while communicating with multiple external organizations.
It was also important to Protective Insurance to make smarter decisions by running models on its own unstructured data. Much of the unstructured data that agents gather in the field consists of still images and videos of accident scenes. When Protective Insurance started moving this data into Microsoft Azure Data Lake, the company discovered that Azure Synapse Analytics let it seamlessly incorporate data into its analytics strategy. “We had a lot of pictures of accidents, and we didn't know what to do with them. Now, we're able to actually run analytics on them in Data Lake. We started to really leverage our unstructured data,” said Omidfar.
DATA ON THE MOVE- TELEMETRY & TRANSPORTATION:
One crucial source of data comes telemetrically from the trucks themselves. When a customer watches the little icon of a delivery driver on their phone, they’re seeing a vast amount of information generated in real time. Storing, accessing, and acting on that data has traditionally been a heavy lift. Azure Synapse provided Protective Insurance the means to not only store telemetry data, but to better act on it.
As Omidfar puts it, “We get a lot of telematics data from the trucks that we insure, and it was just way too expensive to store it. And the compute requirements were also too expensive. Having a place where we can store it and run analytics on it that is cost-effective was really important to us.”
One way the company leveraged its telemetry data was to use Microsoft Power BI, a powerful business analytics service that allows users to generate visualizations and dashboards. Previously unwieldy data sets were now elegantly displayed, making the process of reviewing claims faster and more efficient.
USING DATA TO PREVENT ACCIDENTS BEFORE THEY HAPPEN:
Growth requires innovation. Azure Synapse gives Protective Insurance the ability to use machine learning to make correlations in data that wouldn’t have been possible before. In one instance, the company was able to dive deep into the data to identify a particularly dangerous intersection.
“We were looking at a graphical map of the most instances of head and neck injuries,” said Omidfar. “It was easier for us to actually identify the customers that drive through that intersection quite a bit and tell them to avoid it (during) certain times of day.
With Azure, we can actually help our customers drive more safely and keep the roads safer for the rest of us,” adds Omnidfar. “It’s really powerful how simple things can literally save people’s lives.”
DRIVING SAVINGS & NEW REVENUE WITH AZURE
Staying current, future-proofing infrastructure, and creating new opportunities for innovation are all part of the Protective Insurance story. What about reducing costs and driving new revenue?
Migrating the company’s infrastructure and data workloads to Azure is helping reduce capital expenditures and allowing the company to repurpose its existing datacenter for revenue-generating initiatives. The long-trusted company is now poised to grow with Azure Synapse Analytics. According to Omidfar, “Our plan now is in the next 50 weeks to move all of our data onto Azure, build our enterprise data warehouse using Azure Synapse, and build all of our data hubs and data stores on Azure.”
In today’s transportation industry, drivers deliver more than goods—they deliver data. Powered by Azure Synapse, Protective Insurance looks ahead and drives digital transformation.
Managed DR & Backup Operations with Microsoft Azure
The client is a prominent law firm in south East USA. They were running their offices, servers & network infrastructure on a hosted center which was extended to Microsoft Azure. They wanted to maintain certain workloads in their hosted data center but wanted high availability of these workloads. These workloads included compute, storage, networking web app and Azure Backup.
SNP performed a cloud assessment of the client’s existing infrastructure and prepared a detailed roadmap for deploying a hybrid cloud strategy to achieve stable, secure and high-performance workloads running on Azure IaaS. SNP constantly monitored and managed the Azure workloads.
To get the client production-ready, SNP leveraged multiple technologies like Azure Monitor, Azure Log Analytics, Azure Application Insights, Service Map, Tool, and Log Analytics Workspace.
The client has experienced enhanced scalability, business continuity, and enhanced security of its IT service delivery. The client reconfigured their Azure Site Recovery and implemented the best practices. Some of the most significant improvements experienced by the client are:
• The client achieved higher levels of continuity, scalability, and security after implementing a Hybrid Cloud.
• The client gained confidence about their disaster recovery implementation with SNP’s DR drills which were performed without any impact on the primary production application.
• SNP’s 24/7 managed support service is an assurance to the customer that their applications will be available and complaint.
SNP performed a cloud assessment of the client’s existing infrastructure and prepared a detailed roadmap for deploying a hybrid cloud strategy to achieve stable, secure and high-performance workloads running on Azure IaaS. SNP constantly monitored and managed the Azure workloads.
To get the client production-ready, SNP leveraged multiple technologies like Azure Monitor, Azure Log Analytics, Azure Application Insights, Service Map, Tool, and Log Analytics Workspace.
The client has experienced enhanced scalability, business continuity, and enhanced security of its IT service delivery. The client reconfigured their Azure Site Recovery and implemented the best practices. Some of the most significant improvements experienced by the client are:
• The client achieved higher levels of continuity, scalability, and security after implementing a Hybrid Cloud.
• The client gained confidence about their disaster recovery implementation with SNP’s DR drills which were performed without any impact on the primary production application.
• SNP’s 24/7 managed support service is an assurance to the customer that their applications will be available and complaint.
SNP Implements Azure Security Center for a Leading MNC for unified security management and threat protection across workloads located on-premises
The client is a global organization which specializes in inventory management applications, which is hosted on Azure and is used by MNC’s. They have huge databases that store mission critical data of the customers using their applications. The client was very concerned with aspects around security on Azure, so the challenge was to secure the resources, applications and databases at every possible level and make sure the that does not hinder the flexibility of using and accessing the resources hosted on Azure.
SNP’s team of security experts worked closely with the client team and leveraged the native security applications and few marketplace appliances on Azure. We were able to deliver exactly what the client expected by enabling security center. The client could get a complete and clear picture of the security state of the resources on Azure, SNP helped them define the policies specific to their requirement. As the next step, SNP worked with the client in making them understand the importance of the recommendations and helped the remediate them, thereby achieving the highest secure score as possible, the secure score reflects the security state of the resources on Azure. To get the client production ready SNP leveraged technologies like Azure Sentinel, Log Analytics, Azure Monitor and Azure Security Center. Some of the benefits the customer experienced were:
• Prioritized alerts and incidents – with security center, the customer got access to advanced analytics and global threat intelligence to detect incoming attacks and post-breach activity. Alerts automatically prioritized and grouped into incidents, helping them address the most critical threats first, and giving them the flexibility to create custom security alert groupings.
• We helped the customer reduce network attacks with controlled access to management ports on Azure VMs. This drastically reduces exposure to brute force and other network attacks.
• Adaptive application controls were leveraged to block malware and other unwanted applications by applying whitelisting recommendations adapted to specific Azure workloads.
• Security Policy Settings were leveraged for applications that used regulated data, such as personally identifiable information. These helped the customer easily identify potential vulnerabilities and mitigate threats.
• Email notifications determined security contacts, and email notification settings.
SNP’s team of security experts worked closely with the client team and leveraged the native security applications and few marketplace appliances on Azure. We were able to deliver exactly what the client expected by enabling security center. The client could get a complete and clear picture of the security state of the resources on Azure, SNP helped them define the policies specific to their requirement. As the next step, SNP worked with the client in making them understand the importance of the recommendations and helped the remediate them, thereby achieving the highest secure score as possible, the secure score reflects the security state of the resources on Azure. To get the client production ready SNP leveraged technologies like Azure Sentinel, Log Analytics, Azure Monitor and Azure Security Center. Some of the benefits the customer experienced were:
• Prioritized alerts and incidents – with security center, the customer got access to advanced analytics and global threat intelligence to detect incoming attacks and post-breach activity. Alerts automatically prioritized and grouped into incidents, helping them address the most critical threats first, and giving them the flexibility to create custom security alert groupings.
• We helped the customer reduce network attacks with controlled access to management ports on Azure VMs. This drastically reduces exposure to brute force and other network attacks.
• Adaptive application controls were leveraged to block malware and other unwanted applications by applying whitelisting recommendations adapted to specific Azure workloads.
• Security Policy Settings were leveraged for applications that used regulated data, such as personally identifiable information. These helped the customer easily identify potential vulnerabilities and mitigate threats.
• Email notifications determined security contacts, and email notification settings.
SNP Migrates a Leading Law Firm to Azure, Leading to a Hike in Customer Satisfaction Rate
The client is focused on residential and commercial real estate transactions, wills and probate and small business matters.
Looking to grow the business with a substantial increase the customer base, the client was constantly pulled back by CLOUDSMART. CLOUDSMART provides data center colocation and hosting services for websites, email, databases, online backup/replication and other key applications. However, the client suffered frequent websites outages that lead their customers to face inconvenience. To cut back their operational costs, improve the customer experience and get a reliable backup and disaster recovery setup, the client approached SNP technologies.
We partnered with them and the client validated that they could run their website on Azure Web App for Container Service. We helped the client migrate their website from VM on CLOUDSMART to Azure Web App for Container Service with Azure DevOps for Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Deployment (CD).
Post migration the client has experienced significant improvement in the speed and efficiency of their IT service delivery. The company scaled up the website performance depending on the number of users per session with Azure DevOps for Automated Build Process.
The most significant impact experienced by the client are:
• The client’s infrastructure management time has reduced by 80% with managed support from SNP.
•The client has drastically reduced the cost of maintaining their infrastructure now that they don’t need to Maintain Virtual Machine, Patching of VM, Security.
In the next two years, the client is looking to fully support and move all their hosting websites to Azure.
Looking to grow the business with a substantial increase the customer base, the client was constantly pulled back by CLOUDSMART. CLOUDSMART provides data center colocation and hosting services for websites, email, databases, online backup/replication and other key applications. However, the client suffered frequent websites outages that lead their customers to face inconvenience. To cut back their operational costs, improve the customer experience and get a reliable backup and disaster recovery setup, the client approached SNP technologies.
We partnered with them and the client validated that they could run their website on Azure Web App for Container Service. We helped the client migrate their website from VM on CLOUDSMART to Azure Web App for Container Service with Azure DevOps for Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Deployment (CD).
Post migration the client has experienced significant improvement in the speed and efficiency of their IT service delivery. The company scaled up the website performance depending on the number of users per session with Azure DevOps for Automated Build Process.
The most significant impact experienced by the client are:
• The client’s infrastructure management time has reduced by 80% with managed support from SNP.
•The client has drastically reduced the cost of maintaining their infrastructure now that they don’t need to Maintain Virtual Machine, Patching of VM, Security.
In the next two years, the client is looking to fully support and move all their hosting websites to Azure.
SNP Helps a Leading Law Firm Implement Disaster Recovery Solution and Azure Best Practices
This client is a leading law firm focussing on bankruptcy, workouts, creditors’ rights, employment law, immigration, commercial real estate, employee benefits, banking law, privacy and information security, venture capital, public utilities etc.
The client was running their offices, servers & network infrastructure on a hosted center which was extended on Microsoft Azure. Their existing hosted datacenter was running on VMWare as a base. The client approached SNP to reconfigure their Azure Site Recovery infrastructure as per the best practices.
We partnered with them to perform a cloud assessment of the client’s existing infrastructure and prepared a detailed roadmap for deploying a hybrid cloud strategy to achieve stable, secure and high-performance workloads running on Azure IaaS.
By leveraging technologies like Hybrid Networking, Hybrid Identity, Azure IaaS, VMWare, and Azure Site Recovery, the client has experienced enhanced scalability, business continuity, and enhanced security of its IT service delivery. The client reconfigured their Azure Site Recovery and implemented the best practices.
The client was running their offices, servers & network infrastructure on a hosted center which was extended on Microsoft Azure. Their existing hosted datacenter was running on VMWare as a base. The client approached SNP to reconfigure their Azure Site Recovery infrastructure as per the best practices.
We partnered with them to perform a cloud assessment of the client’s existing infrastructure and prepared a detailed roadmap for deploying a hybrid cloud strategy to achieve stable, secure and high-performance workloads running on Azure IaaS.
By leveraging technologies like Hybrid Networking, Hybrid Identity, Azure IaaS, VMWare, and Azure Site Recovery, the client has experienced enhanced scalability, business continuity, and enhanced security of its IT service delivery. The client reconfigured their Azure Site Recovery and implemented the best practices.
Hybrid Cloud Framework with Disaster Recovery on Microsoft Azure
The client is a New York based, vertically integrated real estate operating and development company with expertise in a wide array of value creation activities, including distressed investments, uncovering value in complex transactions, structured finance investments and real estate development.
The client has a Hyper-V infrastructure and was looking for a disaster recovery and cloud failover. SNP worked closely with the client for a cloud assessment where it was discovered that the client has noted several servers running on legacy operating systems and other with operating systems that are nearing the end of life. The total legacy operating system percentage is 28%, which is a significant percentage to be unprotected.
SNP Technologies performed a cloud assessment for their existing infrastructure and prepared a detailed cloud migration roadmap with a Hybrid Cloud strategy for enhanced stability, security and high performance of the workloads running on Azure IaaS.
SNP leveraged Azure Governance to achieve control over Azure subscriptions, cost management, secured access management of Azure resources and to meet overall policies of the organization. Tools like Azure security center, log analytics, application gateways, network watcher and DDoS protection were leveraged via Azure unified security. As desired by the client Hybrid connectivity was achieved by establishing connectivity between Azure Virtual Network and private cloud.
The client has a Hyper-V infrastructure and was looking for a disaster recovery and cloud failover. SNP worked closely with the client for a cloud assessment where it was discovered that the client has noted several servers running on legacy operating systems and other with operating systems that are nearing the end of life. The total legacy operating system percentage is 28%, which is a significant percentage to be unprotected.
SNP Technologies performed a cloud assessment for their existing infrastructure and prepared a detailed cloud migration roadmap with a Hybrid Cloud strategy for enhanced stability, security and high performance of the workloads running on Azure IaaS.
SNP leveraged Azure Governance to achieve control over Azure subscriptions, cost management, secured access management of Azure resources and to meet overall policies of the organization. Tools like Azure security center, log analytics, application gateways, network watcher and DDoS protection were leveraged via Azure unified security. As desired by the client Hybrid connectivity was achieved by establishing connectivity between Azure Virtual Network and private cloud.
Migrating Hyper V servers to Microsoft Azure for a Leading Real Estate Provider
The client is a leading real estate provider.
The client has a Hyper-V infrastructure and was looking for a disaster recovery and cloud failover. SNP worked closely with the client for a cloud assessment where it was discovered that the client has noted several server running on legacy operating systems and other with operating systems that are nearing the end of life. The total legacy operating system percentage is 28%, which is a significant percentage to be unprotected.
SNP Technologies performed a cloud assessment for their existing infrastructure and prepared a detailed cloud migration roadmap with a Hybrid Cloud strategy for enhanced stability, security and high performance of the workloads running on Azure IaaS. SNP leveraged Azure Governance to achieve control over Azure subscriptions, cost management, secured access management of Azure resources and to meet overall policies of the organization. Tools like Azure security center, log analytics, application gateways, network watcher and DDoS protection were leveraged via Azure unified security. As desired by the client Hybrid connectivity was achieved by establishing connectivity between Azure Virtual Network and private cloud.
The client has a Hyper-V infrastructure and was looking for a disaster recovery and cloud failover. SNP worked closely with the client for a cloud assessment where it was discovered that the client has noted several server running on legacy operating systems and other with operating systems that are nearing the end of life. The total legacy operating system percentage is 28%, which is a significant percentage to be unprotected.
SNP Technologies performed a cloud assessment for their existing infrastructure and prepared a detailed cloud migration roadmap with a Hybrid Cloud strategy for enhanced stability, security and high performance of the workloads running on Azure IaaS. SNP leveraged Azure Governance to achieve control over Azure subscriptions, cost management, secured access management of Azure resources and to meet overall policies of the organization. Tools like Azure security center, log analytics, application gateways, network watcher and DDoS protection were leveraged via Azure unified security. As desired by the client Hybrid connectivity was achieved by establishing connectivity between Azure Virtual Network and private cloud.
Enterprise Security Framework with Azure Arc based Compliance
The customer is a leading insurance provider in the United States. The client needed an infrastructure that was HITRUST and PCI compliant, while securing their applications hosted on Azure and on-premises. Their challenges included:
• No centralized way to manage their operations or hybrid workloads.
• No visibility into server workloads that have security and compliance risks.
• No SIEM tools were in place for their current infrastructure a
• The client’s tech team had limited experience with the Azure security tool set.
SNP proposed the Enterprise Security Framework with Azure Arc based Compliance where:
• We introduced Azure Sentinel and integrated all the services for SOAR (Security Orchestration and Automation) for their infrastructure and applications.
• Azure Arc was enabled for their application servers and Kubernetes environment.
• We applied the HITRUST & PCI blueprint for all their required resources in the infrastructure and verified the compliance state.
• SNP identified and applied remediations to non-compliant workloads
After a successful delivery of the engagement, the following benefits were achieved:
• Securing the environment with all the required policies.
• Bringing visibility with Azure Sentinel and Azure Arc for their hybrid infrastructure.
• Continuous governance and compliance scanning across their hybrid workloads.
• Quick turnaround on remediating non-compliant workloads.
• Quick turnaround on applying compliance practices to their on-premises servers.
• Saved 500-man hours of efforts for customer’s internal security team to be ready
• No centralized way to manage their operations or hybrid workloads.
• No visibility into server workloads that have security and compliance risks.
• No SIEM tools were in place for their current infrastructure a
• The client’s tech team had limited experience with the Azure security tool set.
SNP proposed the Enterprise Security Framework with Azure Arc based Compliance where:
• We introduced Azure Sentinel and integrated all the services for SOAR (Security Orchestration and Automation) for their infrastructure and applications.
• Azure Arc was enabled for their application servers and Kubernetes environment.
• We applied the HITRUST & PCI blueprint for all their required resources in the infrastructure and verified the compliance state.
• SNP identified and applied remediations to non-compliant workloads
After a successful delivery of the engagement, the following benefits were achieved:
• Securing the environment with all the required policies.
• Bringing visibility with Azure Sentinel and Azure Arc for their hybrid infrastructure.
• Continuous governance and compliance scanning across their hybrid workloads.
• Quick turnaround on remediating non-compliant workloads.
• Quick turnaround on applying compliance practices to their on-premises servers.
• Saved 500-man hours of efforts for customer’s internal security team to be ready
