IAG gravitates to more SaaS-based applications

Insurer IAG is set to convert more of its application estate to software-as-a-service, favouring that over having applications that are hosted either on-premises or on partner-run IaaS.

Executive general manager for partnering, integration and quality Andrew Alexander outlined the shift at the AWS Summit Sydney.

“We’re moving from what I’d describe as maybe some more traditional engineering practices, on-prem infrastructure or IaaS with partners, and … apps constructed on top of that infrastructure in a more traditional way,” he said.

“We’re on a journey to move probably more predominantly to SaaS-based core assets for IAG as a group.”

Particular emphasis from an engineering perspective is being placed on integrating the “new stuff together really well with the 'heritage' stuff, which we’re very proud of and has run our business for many years.”

Alexander noted IAG’s long history of “bringing together brands and businesses”.

“As a result, we’ve had - for a long time - a number of different technologies across our ecosystem, [including] some core platforms that are on different technology stacks [and are] engineered in a slightly different way,” he said.

“As a team, we’ve been on a journey for quite a few years trying to really simplify our technology assets across our group, [but] we’re really reaching a point where we’re over the edge on the volume that we want to have on those simplified platforms.”

Converting some of that to SaaS is seen as a path forward that would assist IAG to achieve one of its strategic aims - of delivering value through digital operations and, by association, engineering.

“It’s about this next generation of application architecture, for want of a better phrase, and the way that we put these SaaS products together with the old [systems] and unlock value; decoupling - making our systems more modular; and allowing us to be faster to value through that software asset stack,” Alexander said.

Engineering excellence, Alexander said, would also be demonstrated by changes to the software delivery lifecycle enabled by the introduction of new SaaS-based software assets.

“[It’s about] how we’re making sure they’re up to date, and that we’re turning out new products/new features for our people and for our customer experience,” he said.

“It's a major pillar of what we’re considering engineering excellence.”

Ry Crozier attended AWS Summit Sydney as a guest of AWS.