Allianz General Insurance Malaysia Berhad is a top general insurance company in Malaysia. The company sought to implement new technologies to improve its business processes and comply with newly released guidelines from the Malaysian central bank and other international financial bodies. In the area of electronic messaging—a vital component in the company’s operations—Allianz decided to upgrade to Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007. The migration helps Allianz General Insurance take advantage of enhanced features such as unified messaging, near-instant access to e-mail on Windows Mobile® 5.0 powered mobile devices, and e-mail archiving. By using Exchange Server 2007, the company has been able to reduce hardware costs, more easily comply with regulatory requirements, and improve operational efficiency.

Situation

Allianz General Insurance Malaysia Berhad is a member of the Allianz Group, one of the world’s leading providers of insurance and other financial services.

I like Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 because it helps us reduce our hardware investments and saves us a lot of money. With Exchange Server 2007, we don’t need to use expensive SAN storage for a clustering environment. Marcus Chiang Head of IT Division Allianz General Insurance Malaysia Berhad

It is one of the top three general insurance companies in Malaysia, offering a wide variety of services to individuals, small to medium-sized businesses, and large industrial firms.

Allianz General Insurance is supported by a network of 35 branches and more than 5,000 agents in Malaysia. The company has approximately 835 staff members. Allianz General Insurance also has a life insurance subsidiary, Allianz Life Insurance Malaysia.

Electronic messaging has become an integral part of the company’s business success. E-mail is not only used for internal communication, but also as a daily means of communication with agents, business partners, and government agencies. Allianz General Insurance provides all of its staff with e-mail accounts, and uses e-mail to communicate corporate news, policies, and information to employees located all over the country.

“Insurance claims and adjusters’ reports are submitted to us through e-mail, which helps speed up the processing of insurance claims,” says Marcus Chiang, Head of the IT Division at Allianz General Insurance. In addition, e-mail is a major component of the eCover Note system, a service required by the Malaysian government that makes it possible for insurance customers to get vehicle insurance quotes online.

The Allianz General Insurance messaging system runs on the Microsoft® Exchange Server 2003 communication and collaboration server. The company was one of the earliest adopters of Exchange Server 2003 when it was introduced in Malaysia in 2003. Chiang says that this aggressive IT strategy is driven by the company’s CEO. “Our CEO is a very technology savvy person. Previously, IT was viewed as tool for back-end processing. That has changed—we now see IT as a strategic business tool,” he says.

“We like to explore new technologies that are available in the market that can help us to improve our business processes and comply with new guidelines from the Malaysian central bank and other international financial bodies,” says Chiang. Recently, Allianz General Insurance focused its attention on updating its messaging systems to include clustering services to create a more flexible and reliable environment.

Solution

Early in 2006, Allianz General Insurance once again proved itself to be at the forefront of its industry in embracing the latest technologies. It became one of the first companies in Malaysia to deploy Microsoft Exchange Server 2007.

“When we learned about enhanced features in Exchange Server 2007 such as unified messaging, direct push e-mail, and e-mail archiving, we knew that this release of Exchange Server would help us improve our operational efficiencies and business processes,” says Chiang.

The company engaged leading technology integrator and Microsoft partner Avanade to assist in the deployment of Exchange Server 2007. The new messaging environment was deployed and configured on two HP ProLiant DL380 G5 Dual-Core Intel® Xeon® processor 5160 servers running the Windows Server® 2003 Standard x64 Edition operating system.

Moving into 64-bit computing will help Allianz General Insurance boost the performance of its messaging system. By comparison, 32-bit e-mail server systems have a 4-gigabyte memory limitation that restricts the ability to cost-effectively support customer needs such as larger inboxes and larger demands for storage. Exchange Server 2007, as a native 64-bit application, is able to access more memory, ensuring higher performance and reliability.

The Allianz General Insurance IT team was pleasantly surprised at how easy Exchange Server 2007 was to install. “The graphical user interface is simple and intuitive. The installation went very smoothly,” says Susanto Effendy, Systems Architect, Allianz General Insurance. “We have been happy with Exchange Server and never considered moving to another platform.”

Benefits

Allianz General Insurance has seen many benefits from deploying Exchange Server 2007, including reduced hardware costs, helpful regulatory compliance tools, enhanced operational efficiency, and a flexible and responsive mobile messaging solution.

Reduced Hardware Costs

“I like Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 because it helps us reduce our hardware investments and saves us a lot of money,” says Chiang.

Implementing Exchange Server 2007 has already helped Allianz General Insurance significantly reduce its budget for new storage area network (SAN) storage hardware. Exchange Server 2007 is designed to make better use of existing storage systems and also allows administrators to use low-cost options like Direct Attached Storage even in demanding enterprise environments.

“With Exchange Server 2007, we don’t need to use expensive SAN storage for a clustering environment. We had previously budgeted about RM150,000 (approximately U.S.$95,500) for SAN storage, but options such as Direct Attached Storage will reduce that cost by more than half,” says Chiang.

He adds, “With the new archiving capability, we can reduce user mailbox size. We also don’t need to purchase a third-party solution to archive our messages.”

Regulatory Compliance

In the financial industry, governance and compliance with various statutory and nonlegal requirements are major concerns, particularly in the area of keeping records for electronic delivery systems such as e-mail and voice mail.

Chiang says that the e-mail life cycle management capabilities in Exchange Server 2007 is a key reason why Allianz General Insurance decided to upgrade to the new version. “Legally, we are required to keep our business records, including e-mail, for six years. This means we have to archive all of our e-mail messages because security bodies might want to audit them at any time,” says Chiang.

In Exchange Server 2007, journaling of e-mail messages can be triggered per database, per distribution list, or per user. Journaled messages can be archived to any Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) address, including an Exchange Server mailbox or Microsoft Windows® SharePoint® Services site. The powerful archiving capabilities of Exchange Server 2007 ensure that Allianz General Insurance is in compliance with guidelines issued by its corporate headquarters, central bank, and other financial authorities.

Another helpful feature in Exchange Server 2007 is the ability to create signatures for e-mail messages and deploy them at the server level. “This is very useful as we can append, say, a legal disclaimer at the end of all outgoing e-mail messages at the company,” says Chiang.

More Efficient Operations

Allianz General Insurance sees improved operational efficiencies in managing its messaging system with Exchange Server 2007. In particular, the cache improvements and Local Continuous Replication capability have dramatically improved backup speeds.

With Local Continuous Replication, availability is increased using continuous replication of data across multiple disks on a single server. In the event of a disk failure or data corruption, switching over to the copy database provides a less complex and faster recovery solution. “Previously, the IT team would take up to two days to complete the recovery process for all of the mailboxes. With Local Continuous Replication in place, the typical recovery process would take a couple of hours,” says Susanto.

The reduced log file sizes in Exchange Server 2007 has also contributed to faster backup. “Log files generated by Exchange Server 2007 are only 1 megabyte in size, so the databases are smaller. This has reduced the time taken to back them up by about half,” says Susanto. And this means that the daily backup is less likely to disrupt e-mail services because it will be completed long before the staff comes into the office each morning.

Additionally, the solution offered best-in-class reliability through leading Random Access Storage (RAS) features built in to the Dual-Core Intel® Xeon® processors, chipsets and memory architecture to improve reliability and deliver high levels of system availability for Exchange Server 2007.

Increased Responsiveness of Mobile Users

The company plans to deploy mobile devices more extensively among its staff, and reports that Exchange Server 2007 greatly facilitates that process. Chiang says that Direct Push Technology was a major factor in the company’s decision to upgrade to Exchange Server 2007. Direct Push makes it possible for mobile devices powered by Windows Mobile® 5.0 software to receive messages from Exchange Server 2007 almost immediately without requiring synchronization. “With direct push e-mail, our staff with mobile devices can receive e-mail anytime and anywhere,” he says. “You just wait for your messages to come in instead of having to go and get them.”

Anywhere access to e-mail is vital at Allianz General Insurance because information and decisions often have to be conveyed to staff and business partners immediately. “When brokers send us e-mail queries, they require a very quick response. Otherwise they may take their business to our competitors,” says Chiang. “By using the fast mobile e-mail capability of Exchange Server 2007, we can improve the quality of our customer service and take better advantage of business opportunities.”

For More Information

For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com

For more information about Avanade products and services, call +6(03) 2731 4800 or visit the Web site at:
www.avanade.com

For more information about Allianz General Insurance products and services, call +6(03) 2168 6868 or visit the Web site at:
www.allianz.com.my  

Microsoft Server Product Portfolio

For more information about the Microsoft server product portfolio, go to:
www.microsoft.com/servers/default.mspx

For more information about Microsoft Exchange Server, go to:
www.microsoft.com/exchange

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published October 2006


 

Top of page