Discovery Takes Smart Approach to Cloud as it Pursues Global Growth

Improving efficiency through cloud adoption

Discovery Limited, an insurance and financial services company based in South Africa with worldwide operations, has enhanced its efficiency and effectiveness in securing and managing its multiple cloud environments by adopting CloudHealth by VMware® and VMware Secure State™. This allows for better risk mitigation and more informed decisions, accelerating digital transformation and global expansion.

Discovery's core purpose is to improve people's health and well-being by making them aware of health risk factors and guiding them toward better health choices. Johan Marais, senior platform services manager at Discovery Group, explains, "We base our products around actuarial data and values. The insight we find in people's behavior helps us model new services. Our customers' data is of the utmost importance."

To support its global operations and pursue new opportunities, Discovery recognized the need for scale, flexibility, and global reach. Beginning its cloud journey in 2012, the company found building on-premise infrastructure in every location impractical, slow, and unaffordable.

Discovery Overview

Discovery is a South African-founded financial services organization operating in healthcare, life assurance, short-term insurance, savings and investment, and wellness markets. Its globally recognized Vitality Shared-Value insurance model, active in 22 countries, reflects its core purpose of making people healthier and enhancing their lives.

• INDUSTRY: Financial Services
• LOCATION: Sandton, South Africa
• VMWARE FOOTPRINT: CloudHealth by VMware, VMware Secure State

Leveraging the CloudHealth operating platform

AWS is Discovery's preferred cloud provider, with a significant increase in AWS spend and accelerated cloud adoption over the past year to maintain flexibility and market leadership. Managing over 9,000 servers with a team of six presented challenges in maintaining cloud posture and keeping pace with business acceleration.

Pierre Meyer, head of platform at Discovery, noted, "Operations around maintaining good posture in the cloud became much harder. Business was moving quicker than what we could manage." The company sought to simplify cloud landscape management, improve reporting, and gain a single view of all cloud activity, enabling faster action on issues and enhancing security and governance.

Johan Marais added, "We have an attitude here that we can build things from the ground up. We're a lean, agile team, and we move at pace. It's important we free up people's time, so we can focus on new projects. We want to be more efficient in the way we deal with the day-to-day things."

CloudHealth by VMware provides a multi-cloud reporting infrastructure through a single pane of glass, enhancing transparency of cloud usage and its impact on cost, performance, and scalability. VMware Secure State complements this by offering a distinct approach to public cloud security, improving visibility and the speed of vulnerability updates to understand risks in near real-time.

"CloudHealth by VMware provides a centralized, standardized view of our cloud activity, then VMware Secure State comes in from the side and tells us how compliant our security posture is," says Marais.

CloudHealth analyzes asset performance metrics to help Discovery visualize and correct underutilized resources. Its Cost Report and RI Exchanger provide a holistic view of cost savings across all accounts, simplifying reporting and identifying opportunities for cost reduction based on reserved instance usage trends. Customized, automated policies enable immediate cost-saving actions.

Discovery chose VMware solutions due to existing integration and a clear understanding of the value proposition. Marais stated, "The biggest thing for us was, because we were already a consumer of VMware solutions, we could see more integration coming down the line." He further commented on the crowded cloud market, "There are a lot of players in the cloud space, lots of free and open source tool sets. However, do we really want to deal with another vendor and another engagement model? VMware was a natural fit; we understood the value of CloudHealth by VMware; we didn't have to reinvent the account."

"CloudHealth by VMware, for the first time, creates a single view of our cloud activity, across multiple territories. We're no longer hunting for information. It's all there at the click of a button." - Johan Marais, Senior Platform Services Manager, Discovery Group.

Accelerating digital transformation

Discovery now manages its multiple cloud environments more efficiently and effectively. Informed cloud decisions accelerate digital transformation and global expansion. Despite a doubling of cloud investment in 2018-19, costs decreased by 40 percent due to effective management and waste reduction. Reports are now generated on demand, providing clear insights into cloud usage. Automation has eliminated the need for two new full-time employees for reporting and security management.

"CloudHealth by VMware, for the first time, creates a single view of our cloud activity, across multiple territories," says Marais. "We're no longer hunting for information. It's all there at the click of a button." This consolidates reports from 62 cloud environments in 12 countries, strengthening the link between operations and security teams and establishing a single version of truth.

Marais emphasizes the importance of data security and industry compliance. "Again, we now have a single view, which helps us understand how good or bad we are in different parts of the world. VMware Secure State not only identifies any potential issues, but it also ranks them in order of risk. It means we're more effective in focusing our attention on the most critical risks."

VMware Secure State enables visualization of security posture and prioritization of issues based on risk. The object graph helps stakeholders understand the scope of problems. Marais explains, "CloudHealth by VMware discovers all different configurations, then VMware Secure State tells us the risk factors in the event of any changes. Because it's event-based we're notified immediately. It's almost like we're self-healing our cloud space in real-time."

Looking ahead

Cloud will continue to be essential for Discovery's global expansion, enabling scalability and speed. Thanks to CloudHealth, future decisions will be more informed regarding the optimal cloud environment for different projects and regions.

"We can tie together cost, security and performance in a single view, and make the right decision. Each cloud provider is unique, they all have their advantages. What we see in VMware is a business that is on the same journey as us. It's a great comfort to us that VMware is aligned on security and transparency issues."