Discovery is a South African-founded financial services organization that operates in the healthcare, life assurance, short-term insurance, savings and investment, and wellness markets. Since inception, Discovery has been guided by a clear core purpose—to make people healthier and to enhance and protect their lives.
Discovery was at risk of losing track of key cloud operations
Daily cloud operations proved to be a challenge for Discovery, with a team of six people struggling to manage over 9,000 servers and a large AWS footprint, and business was accelerating at a pace that the team couldn’t possibly manage at scale. Johan Marais, Senior Platform Services Manager at Discovery, says that within a 12 month period, his team doubled its AWS spend and accelerated cloud adoption across the enterprise in a move to maintain flexibility and market leadership.
Leveraging CloudHealth and VMware Secure State
Discovery was a consumer of VMware solutions before adopting CloudHealth and VMware Secure State. VMware was already a trusted vendor and the Discovery team wanted to explore other VMware solutions to add to their portfolio. Marais felt CloudHealth and VMware Secure State were a natural fit for his team, providing solutions he could trust with clear ROI.
CloudHealth enhances the transparency of Discovery’s cloud usage and its overall impact on cost, performance, and scalability. The reporting process is easier than ever, with CloudHealth’s Cost Explorer and RI Exchanger giving Discovery a holistic view of cost savings across all accounts. To further help the Discovery team, CloudHealth enables customized, automated policies to identify immediate cost-saving opportunities and take corrective action.
.vidyard-player-container iframe {width: 100%; height: 100%;}
In addition, VMware Secure State’s unique approach to public cloud security allows the team to visualize their security posture, see how different objects are connected, and then prioritize all issues based on risk. The ranking in order of risk allows the team to focus their attention on the most critical risks, Marais shares.
Accelerating digital transformation
Discovery is now more efficient and effective in the way it manages multiple cloud environments. The team is able to make more informed cloud decisions, allowing the business to accelerate its digital transformation and explore new opportunities worldwide.
While Discovery’s investment in cloud has doubled from 2018-19, says Marais, costs are down 40 percent due to more effective management and reduction of waste. Reports are generated on demand rather than days, and there is a clear sense of how cloud is being used.
“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.”
Senior Platform Services Manager at Discovery
Marais says, thanks to CloudHealth, the future will see more informed decisions as to the best cloud environment for different projects and different territories.
Read the case study to learn how Discovery leverages CloudHealth and VSS to optimize cloud costs and keep their environment secure.
