Athora (formerly VIVAT) encompasses multiple insurance brands, which have been helping customers become more financially self-reliant for 150 years. The company leverages state-of-the art technologies, excels in efficient business processes and fosters an agile culture of continuous customer service improvements and employee growth.

Athora developed its core insurance systems using the Unisys EAE/LINC programming language running on Unisys Libra 690 mainframes. Over time, the company found that this environment burdened it with high costs and limited flexibility. It thoroughly investigated various options for an alternate solution, including Unisys AB Suite, migrating to a standard package and outsourcing application maintenance and system operations. Key decision criteria included business continuity, risk, impact on the organisation, future readiness, flexibility and cost. Athora ultimately chose Avanade’s Automated Migration Technology (AMT) solution.

Fifteen applications, of which eight are business critical, were migrated. These included key business functionalities like customer information, individual life policies, property and casualty policies, accounts receivable, credit management, output management and more. In total, 5.3 million lines of code were migrated. The system also used some Algol, Cobol85 and 10023 WFL programmes, as well as several FTP and MQ interfaces.

The migration resulted in:

• 70% reduction of infrastructure and operational costs
• Same or better performance compared to the old system
• Increased user satisfaction
• Increased ability to automate IT work
• A future-proof system based on Microsoft technology
• Increased ability to innovate and integrate flexibility

NOTE: This story describes work that was completed by Asysco, which was acquired by Avanade in November 2022.

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