Insurance platform provider eliminates downtime with Microsoft Azure

Belfast-headquartered insurance distribution platform builder CYTI has been operating since 2010 and was the world’s first company to incorporate medical screenings into a travel insurance aggregation platform. Soon after, this solution was white-labelled by the UK’s biggest comparison site, MoneySupermarket.com.

In order for this platform to quickly onboard other websites and brands and to ensure it was resilient to spikes in demand, CYTI opted to migrate its IT infrastructure to Microsoft Azure. Prior to this, CYTI’s platform ran on VMs hosted by a third-party provider.

However, running on third-party VMs, when the website experienced peaks in demand, CYTI found its infrastructure didn’t have the flexibility to scale up and meet spikes in traffic, leading to occasional crashes. CYTI at first resigned itself to this, as the only alternatives were significant investment in further VMs or a potentially lengthy migration to the cloud.

Then, however, the company learned about Microsoft FastTrack for Azure, a program for organisations running cloud programs that allows rapid and effective design and deployment of Azure solutions. This process included tailored guidance from Azure engineers, who helped CYTI to craft a quicker, simpler and more cost-effective way to meet its demand.

CYTI ultimately saved around £127,500 that would have otherwise been spent on Microsoft SQL Server licenses. With Azure, the company now runs 10 websites, utilising data management with Azure SQL Database and using Azure App Service and Azure Front Door Service to manage networking and connectivity.

Furthermore, it quickly discovered that Azure could easily supply the scalability it needed, giving it the agility to meet peaks in demand, meaning CYTI is now receiving a far higher level of service with reduced expenditure compared to its old VMs.

Overall, Azure has improved the general availability of CYTI’s websites, meaning, for example, that update cycles no longer have to occur during off-peak hours and can happen anytime without customers noticing. On top of this, the company is saving around 30 per cent per year on infrastructure costs, all with better flexibility, servers, customisation and freedom.