- Industry: General insurance
- Capabilities: Cloud Strategy & Migration · Cloud Security & Identity · Cloud-Native Engineering
At a glance
Following years of growth through acquisition, a global insurer found itself managing a fragmented multi-cloud environment with inconsistent operating models, duplicated capabilities and increasing governance challenges. ENEXT partnered with the organisation to establish a unified cloud platform strategy, standardise security and operational controls, and reduce cloud expenditure without slowing delivery.
Outcomes
- 28% reduction in cloud run-rate within two quarters
- All new workloads deployed through compliant landing-zone guardrails
- Cloud-configuration audit findings reduced from 40+ to single digits
- Unified identity and governance model established across cloud environments
- Increased platform-team capacity by reducing operational overhead
- Repeatable Infrastructure-as-Code foundations adopted across delivery teams
The challenge
The insurer’s cloud estate had grown organically across two hyperscalers, with each acquired business arriving with its own accounts, identity model and tagging convention. Cost was growing faster than usage, security exceptions were accumulating, and the central platform team spent more time chasing one-off fixes than enabling delivery.
Bringing Control to a Growing Cloud Estate
Years of acquisitions had accelerated the insurer’s growth but left behind a complex technology landscape. Different business units operated independently across multiple cloud providers, each with its own account structures, identity models, network designs and governance practices.
What began as a manageable level of variation gradually became a source of operational friction. Security exceptions accumulated, cloud costs continued to rise, and audit findings became increasingly difficult to address consistently across the estate.
The central platform team found itself caught in a reactive cycle—spending significant time resolving one-off issues and supporting bespoke implementations rather than enabling product teams to move faster.
The organisation recognised that continuing to scale on the existing foundations would increase both operational risk and cost. A more consistent approach was required.
Establishing a Common Platform Blueprint
ENEXT began with a comprehensive assessment of the insurer’s cloud environment, reviewing architecture, identity, networking, governance controls and FinOps maturity across both hyperscaler platforms.
Rather than focusing on isolated technical issues, the objective was to define a common operating model that could be adopted across the organisation.
Working closely with platform, security and architecture teams, ENEXT designed a unified landing-zone blueprint that established:
- A consistent account and subscription structure
- A consolidated identity model
- Standardised networking patterns
- Policy-as-code guardrails for security and compliance
- Repeatable Infrastructure-as-Code deployment patterns
The resulting platform provided teams with a clear and compliant path for deploying new workloads, reducing the need for custom solutions while improving consistency across the environment.
Driving Cost Optimisation Alongside Modernisation
Recognising that governance and cost efficiency are closely linked, ENEXT delivered a FinOps optimisation programme in parallel with the platform uplift.
Analysis of cloud consumption identified opportunities across commitment-based discounts, idle-resource removal, rightsizing initiatives and architecture improvements. Rather than relying on short-term cost-cutting measures, the focus was placed on structural improvements that would continue delivering value as cloud adoption increased.
The largest opportunities were prioritised first, allowing savings to be realised while the broader platform transformation was underway.
Embedding the New Operating Model
To minimise disruption, existing workloads were migrated into the new platform in planned waves over two quarters.
As the programme progressed, responsibility increasingly shifted to the insurer’s internal platform team. Infrastructure-as-Code modules, deployment patterns and governance controls were designed to be owned and operated internally, ensuring the organisation could continue scaling the platform after the engagement concluded.
This approach helped establish a sustainable operating model rather than a one-off technology implementation.
The Result
Within two quarters, cloud run-rate had reduced by 28%, with the majority of savings achieved through architectural optimisation and commercial efficiency improvements rather than reductions in business consumption.
At the same time, every new workload was being deployed through compliant landing-zone guardrails by default, significantly improving governance and reducing operational risk.
Cloud-configuration audit findings fell from more than 40 to single digits, while the platform team was able to redirect effort away from reactive support activities and towards enabling new product and business initiatives.
The insurer emerged with a scalable cloud foundation that balanced governance, security, cost efficiency and delivery velocity across its multi-cloud environment.
In their words
“We brought ENEXT in for a landing-zone review and ended up keeping them for the full uplift. Independent advice we could actually act on.” — Director of Cloud Platforms