Zurich North America modernizes and strengthens resilience with Azure

As one of the largest commercial insurers in North America, Zurich North America operates in an environment where technology reliability is inseparable from customer trust. Policy underwriting, claims processing, premium audits, and regulatory reporting all depend on systems that must be secure, resilient, and consistently performant. For years, Zurich North America supported these demands with a hybrid IT model that combined on‑premises datacenters with early cloud adoption.

However, while the environment was stable, it was increasingly clear it wasn’t optimized for the pace of change. Customer expectations for speed and digital service continue to rise, regulatory change is constant, and the cost of maintaining aging infrastructure is increasing.

“Staying in the old datacenter model was becoming unsustainable. Modernizing would allow us to simplify our environment, improve resilience, and invest in the technologies that will keep moving the business forward,” says Barry Perkins, Chief Operations Officer, Zurich North America.

The challenge wasn’t a single system or workload. It was the cumulative weight of complexity. Zurich North America needed to transform its IT estate in a way that preserved operational stability and reduced long‑term risk—all without disrupting core insurance operations that customers rely on every day.

Meeting the demands of a regulated, always‑on insurance business

Zurich North America recognized that modernizing its environment would require more than lifting systems into the cloud. It needed a platform capable of supporting business‑critical insurance workloads, enforcing strong governance, and supporting modernization over time—without disrupting core business systems.

As Zurich North America prioritized architectural choices that balanced regulatory complexity and operational familiarity, Microsoft Azure emerged as the right foundation. The organization had already established key platform components on Azure, so teams could move quickly and execute against a demanding migration timeline with confidence.

The modernization effort began with migrating virtual machines and core workloads from on‑premises datacenters, with a focus on maintaining performance and availability throughout the transition. These workloads included a mix of Windows Server–based and Linux on Azure virtual machine applications, reflecting the diversity of Zurich North America’s platforms.

To support performance‑sensitive virtual machine workloads, including SQL applications, analytics, and data integration platforms, Zurich North America relied on Azure Disk Storage. Operating at large scale, the organization uses Azure disks to meet high throughput and availability requirements while maintaining consistent performance for insurance systems migrating from on‑premises infrastructure.

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) was first used with already-containerized applications, establishing a foundation for broader modernization. This approach meant Zurich North America could support those workloads natively on Azure without forcing broader architectural change. The majority of applications continued to run on virtual machines, providing teams the flexibility to modernize each workload based on its technical readiness and risk profile.

“AKS gave us a practical way to bring a small number of already‑containerized applications onto Azure. At the same time, we kept the majority of our core systems on virtual machines, which let us manage risk, maintain stability, and keep the business running throughout the migration,” says Paul Ruskusky, Head of Infrastructure and Operations, Zurich North America.

For its data platforms, Zurich North America adopted Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance, and SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines. This approach delivers the capability to modernize databases while maintaining compatibility with existing applications. As part of a deliberate PaaS‑first strategy, Zurich North America prioritized Azure SQL to automate operational overhead. Fully managed scaling and real‑time elasticity eliminated the need for teams to manually provision compute, storage, and capacity, while built‑in database management reduced ongoing tasks such as indexing and tuning.

In using all these solutions together, the organization could transform database environment while preserving feature parity, operational familiarity, and application compatibility.

Accelerating migration while reducing operational risk

As Zurich North America progressed through its migration and modernization effort, the benefits of a unified Azure foundation became tangible. Consolidating workloads and retiring longstanding datacenter infrastructure, the organization significantly reduced its physical footprint while improving overall resiliency.

Performance improvements were particularly important for core insurance systems, where delays can directly affect customer experience and operational efficiency. Running these workloads on Azure helped Zurich North America to improve response times and ensure critical transactions consistently meet performance expectations, even during periods of peak demand.

The shift away from on-premises infrastructure marked a move toward in-house, cloud-first operations. By reducing its datacenter footprint by 97% and adopting Azure as its core platform, Zurich North America modernized infrastructure and database management and invested in upskilling its own talent. As a result, teams transitioned from hardware maintenance to higher-value work—building cloud expertise and improving how technology enables the business.

“Azure didn’t just reduce risk; it strengthened our resilience. We completed a large‑scale migration with no production incidents—and from a systems perspective, that stability was the real success. It meant the business could keep moving, customers were unaffected, and our teams could focus on what came next,” adds Perkins.

Execution also played a critical role in the program’s success. Zurich North America, Microsoft, and delivery partners operated as a single, unified team—aligned around shared goals, daily collaboration, and a focus on progress over ownership. This approach delivered rapid decision making, reduced friction, and helped ensure the migration was completed ahead of schedule without disruption.

Solidifying a foundation for ongoing modernization and innovation

Beyond immediate performance and operational gains, Zurich North America’s modernization established a foundation for continued evolution.

“Before, too much time was spent chasing data. By standardizing our databases on Azure SQL as part of our modernized platform, automation and more consistent data access let teams focus on analysis instead of manual work,” says Susan Simmons, Head of Premium Audit, Zurich North America.

With its cloud-native, unified data foundation in place, Zurich North America is positioned to incorporate emerging technologies such as AI and language models as business needs evolve. Running application and data platforms on Azure means teams can more easily connect services and managed gateways to experiment with AI-driven capabilities—without rearchitecting core systems or reintroducing operational complexity.

Importantly, this transformation was designed to support the long term. Rather than forcing all applications into a single modernization path, Zurich North America built an environment that allows different workloads to evolve at the right pace. Some applications remain optimized on infrastructure services, while others continue to move toward more cloud‑native architectures.

Supporting the business today and preparing for tomorrow

For Zurich North America, modernizing its IT estate on Azure was ultimately about protecting customer trust—ensuring critical insurance systems remain stable and available even if demand fluctuates. The result is a resilient, scalable technology foundation that supports the organization’s drive to innovate and deliver on customer needs now and in the future.

By migrating and modernizing 160 applications on Azure, Zurich North America improved performance, strengthened resiliency, and reduced operational complexity. The organization maintained the stability required for business‑critical insurance operations, while completing the program five months ahead of schedule, and estimates it avoided approximately $20 million in capital investment.

As customer expectations, the operating landscape, and technology capabilities continue to change, Zurich North America now has an IT environment designed to evolve with them, supporting today’s needs while preparing for what comes next.

Discover more about Zurich North America on LinkedIn and Instagram.