African financial services group Old Mutual Limited has closed its on-premises data centers and completed a 100 percent migration to the cloud.
According to the company, by moving its entire IT infrastructure including the banking, insurance, and wealth management systems to Amazon Web Services (AWS), they have been able to reduce downtime by 50 percent.
The migration involved moving more than 2,000 servers, 215 applications, 1,786 databases and 500 websites to AWS.
“Daily server outages. Disconnected financial products. Ballooning on-premises costs. Those are all challenges we leave behind as we go all-in on AWS,” said May Govender, acting chief information officer for Old Mutual Limited.
“Our AWS digital infrastructure has become the backbone of reliable service—a launchpad for future growth. AWS is helping us imagine new possibilities at every level, providing us with a suite of innovative services like generative AI that will spur new customer experiences that can differentiate Old Mutual in the future.”
The South Africa-based company will be using AWS machine learning and generative AI services including Amazon SageMaker in order to provide real-time financial forecasting and recommendations for customers. For example, it can make savings recommendations for clients approaching retirement or insurance products based on income.
“The completion of Old Mutual’s all-in migration to AWS represents the next chapter of their digital transformation, and we’re excited to help them harness their momentum in the cloud to unlock new innovations,” said Chris Erasmus, country manager at AWS. “Old Mutual is using our leading infrastructure to increase performance, reduce processing times, streamline operations, simplify customer experiences, and reduce costs. AWS will continue to collaborate with Old Mutual as they deliver the next generation of financial products.”
Old Mutual has been a customer of AWS since 2014. The decision to migrate fully to the cloud was made in 2019, and has taken close to four years to complete.
Old Mutual was previously a client of the Pinelands Block-III Data Centre in Johannesburg, South Africa. The company has also directly and indirectly invested in data center companies over the years. In 2021, Old Mutual-backed African Infrastructure Investment Managers acquired Ghana’s online Tier IV facility, previously owned by Etix, and earlier this year the company invested in Teraco, an Africa-located Digital Realty data center provider.
The company was formed in 1845, and now offers services across 14 countries. Old Mutual’s primary operations are on the African Continent but have spread globally over the years.
