AXA: From a Rigid On-Premise World to the Agile Azure Cloud

The Challenge

The heart of the AXA Winterthur division — its SAP CRM system — was trapped in an outdated on-premise world. This system was not only a brake on innovation but also a growing operational risk.

• Lack of Scalability & Agility: The rigid on-premise infrastructure could not keep up with the demands of a modern insurance business. Updates and adjustments were slow and risky.
• High Operating Costs: The manual maintenance and operation of the old hardware generated high and unpredictable costs.
• Risk of Business Disruption: A migration was unavoidable, but the risk of an outage during the transition was unacceptable for AXA. Business continuity had to be guaranteed 100%.
• Complex Dependencies: The CRM system was deeply integrated into AXA’s IT landscape, making a simple “lift and shift” migration impossible.

AXA needed a partner with deep expertise in complex cloud migrations who could guarantee an absolutely seamless transition.

The Solution

Our approach was not “big bang,” but surgical precision in phases to eliminate every risk. We took complete ownership of the planning and execution of the migration.

• Risk Mitigation Through Phases: The migration was divided into several, clearly defined phases. Each phase was intensively tested before the next was initiated. This allowed for continuous control and secured ongoing operations.
• Automation with Infrastructure as Code: From the very beginning, we relied on 100% automated infrastructure. Using Terraform Enterprise, the entire Azure environment was defined as code, ensuring error-free, repeatable, and consistent provisioning. Ansible was used for detailed configuration management.
• Governance as a Safety Net: We established robust governance processes and fully automated rollback pipelines. In the unlikely event of an issue, the system could have been safely reverted to its previous state at any time — without manual intervention.
• Building a Cloud-Native Architecture: The new platform on Azure was designed for high availability, scalability, and security, leveraging modern cloud services.

The Results

The successful migration has transformed the technological foundation of the AXA Winterthur division and made it future-proof.

• Zero Business Disruption: The migration was completed with zero downtime for end-users — a critical success for such a vital system.
• Significantly Lower Operating Costs: Through automation and the efficient use of Azure resources, operating costs were reduced by approximately 40%.
• Gained Agility and Speed: System updates and new deployments are now faster, more predictable, and less risky. The IT team can focus on innovation instead of managing infrastructure.
• Future-Proof Foundation: AXA now has a modern, scalable cloud infrastructure that serves as the basis for future digitalization projects and enables a faster response to market changes.