1. Migrating a SaaS
Platform to AWS
Validus Cloud Computing Strategy

2. Ben Taylor - Technology Director
Validus-IVC Ltd.

3. ● Household name insurers

5. ● Household name insurers
● Established in 2007
● Around 150 employees
● Credit hire claims analysis
● £700 million claims analysed to date

6. Civil Wrong
(Tort)
Credit Hire
Operator
Third-Party
Insurer
No Legal
Relationship
Contract Contract
Claimant Defendant

8. Why move to cloud hosting?
● Current hardware reaching end of life
1. Carry on as we were
2. Invest in new hardware
3. Outsource hosting completely
4. Host in the cloud

9. Three Phase Plan
● Phase 1
○ Move existing architecture to AWS
● Phase 2
○ Make most of AWS technologies, elastic beanstalk
● Phase 3
○ Extend product

10. First Steps
● Start by configuring a VPC
● Separating concerns via security groups
Web Layer
App Support Layer
Application Layer
Database Layer

12. it didn't work...
● No Multicast
● NAT Instance
● SMTP Throttled
● Documents in Database
● DR position no better
● Couldn't Pen Test
● Couldn't use RDS

13. Client Objections
"I like to know that my data is in that box
over there with the flashing lights on."
Information Security Officer at a client insurer

14. USPA

15. Phase 2

16. What's Next - Phase 3
● Elastic MapReduce
○ Log file analysis
○ Fraud detection
● Cloud Formation
○ DR
○ Rapid deployment for developers

17. www.validus-ivc.co.uk
b.taylor@validus-ivc.co.uk