Standard Life Gets a Leg Up with Cognizant IT Infrastructure Help

Having the right information technology (IT) in place can mean the difference between opportunities capitalized on and opportunities irrevocably lost. So when it came time for Standard Life—an insurance company with around 4.5 million customers to its credit—to make some upgrades, it looked to Cognizant for help, and in turn, got a powerful new IT infrastructure that could deliver all the best of today, and some of the best of tomorrow too.

Standard Life turned to Cognizant to get help for its investments, pensions and savings business, which given the aging United States population, is a fairly substantial market that needs driving. Thus, Standard Life needed a way to readily connect third-party suppliers, in some cases several of them at once. Plus, it needed a way to connect all these users across a string of networks, data centers, and transaction platforms, meaning that a cloud-based system was likely going to be the way to go here.

Enter Cognizant, who could offer up a private cloud solution for Standard Life, and the end result was a simple yet fantastic prospect. With the cloud-based system, Standard Life could drop its time-to-market down for new investment products, as well as lower its own levels of capital investment to put the system to work. With a pay-per-use model now available to the company, the end result was a system that was not only more resilient overall, but could be used according to specific needs on the ground.

Cognizant's senior vice president Venu Lambu, who also serves as global head of markets for infrastructure services, commented “he level of collaboration amongst all the service providers was remarkable, delivering a single point of accountability and transparency throughout this transformational program. Standard Life now has a next-generation IT infrastructure that can enable the continued evolution of the company with a cost structure that is aligned with demand and usage.”

One of the great things about a cloud-based infrastructure is that it can be scaled according to needs, meaning that there's no need to run the risk of either overbuying—purposely buying excessive capacity so as to meet future needs that may never occur—or underbuying, buying too little to meet actual demand and either trying to work with it our undertake expansion projects later on. When the system can be ramped up or down as needs require, it becomes much easier to always have just enough capacity on hand, meaning the least investment and the most impact.

The combined effort of Standard Life and Cognizant should realize some impressive results not only for Standard Life, but also for Standard Life's customers. Rapid scalability and improved time-to-market aren't results to scoff at, but rather are instead the start of something great. Given a market that will demand Standard Life's services more, being ready to absorb this increased demand is vital to its long-term health. 

Edited by Maurice Nagle