OREANDA-NEWS. In future, IBM Germany will operate the Talanx Primary Insurance Group’s data centre in Germany. IBM Deutschland GmbH and Talanx Systeme AG, the insurer’s IT service provider, have signed a sourcing contract to that effect. Talanx will receive from IBM services that give the insurance company the strategic opportunity to make use of IBM’s flexible hybrid cloud environment in future. The insurer will therefore use the dedicated Talanx environment, the so-called private cloud, but if required it will also be able to access the public cloud services of IBM’s SoftLayer infrastructure. Along with lower-cost services, the advantages are greater flexibility for available quantities and even greater operational stability. The contract is for a period of seven years.

“Our aim is to support the work of all the Talanx Insurance Group’s divisions even better with a secure, state-of-the-art IT infrastructure,” said J?rn Stapelfeld, CEO of Talanx Systeme AG. “We are convinced that this decision is the right one and an important step towards further improvement in our range of services and cost efficiency.”

Talanx is thereby continuing the standardisation of the IT infrastructure services it has undertaken in recent years. The new architecture delivers a very high level of automation, paving the way for further digitisation of IT services. Moreover, the main focus while drafting the contract was clearly on data protection. The IT environment complies with the most exacting requirements for quality and data security. IBM and Talanx have identical certifications in respect of data security.

The private part of the hybrid cloud architecture runs as an enterprise private cloud within a dedicated environment. This solution permits swift identification and analysis of application errors, and helps to make new services available faster. In addition, suitable workloads are scheduled at a future date for transfer to IBM’s public cloud SoftLayer data centre in Frankfurt, combining private and public cloud to create additional cost flexibility for Talanx.

“Our hybrid cloud solution is of decisive importance for the swift development and implementation of new service offerings for all of the Talanx Primary Insurance Group in Germany,” says Christian Keller, General Manager Global Technology Services IBM Deutschland. “Furthermore, Talanx can cut its operating costs with the delivery model that has now been agreed.”

The new data centre operated by IBM for the Talanx Primary Insurance Group is located in the Frankfurt region within Germany. Services will be operated solely from Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic.

The sourcing contract provides for completion of the transformation to the new environment by the end of 2017.