Aegon Religare Case Study

Mithi Connect Xf Case Study Aegon Religare Life Insurance Page 1 of 4Copyright 2000-2010 Mithi Software Technologies

A Business Case Study

Requirement Solution Top Benefits

Drive down the cost of providing email infrastructure to a rapidly growing workforce, without compromise on performance

Mithi provided a hybrid solution of MS Exchange with OSS based Connect XD to help derive the cost benefits without compromise on special features or performance

Faster & Higher ROI is an automatic result of lower TCO and no compromise.

Collaboration Infrastructure for the Agile Enterprise.

Aegon Religare Life Insurance Company


Overview

Country/Region : India

Industry: Insurance

Customer Profile

AEGON, an international life insurance, pension and investment company, Religare, a global financial services group and Bennett, Coleman & Company, Indias largest media house, have come together to launch AEGON Religare Life Insurance Company Limited (AEGON Religare). This venture is dedicated to build a profitable customer-centric business with scale, providing a work environment that fosters excellence and innovation.

AEGON Religare launched its pan-India operations in July, 2008 following a multi-channel distribution strategy..

Insurance business in India

The US$ 41-billion Indian life insurance industry is considered the fifth largest life insurance market, and growing at a rapid pace of 32-34 per cent annually.

The growth of Indian insurance industry took off after opening up of the insurance sector to private players and allowing foreign direct investment.

"We wanted to have an effective e-mail solution that could bring down the cost of e-mail per employee."

Srinivasan Iyengar Director IT & Operations

Email Costs trigger the search for alternatives

Forrester Research (http://www.forrester.com), in a study conducted by them, recently surveyed IT professionals at North American and European enterprises to find out where they run their email, calendar, contact, and task list services (what Forrester refers to as messaging or email services). Forrester found that cost is the trigger for may of these enterprises to consider shifting from their current systems.

Even a back-of-the-envelope estimation of the fully loaded cost of email, factoring in costs of hardware, server software, client software, spam protection, staff, maintenance, storage, archiving, mobile email, and financing, can throw up an astoundingly high figure.

Analysing and reducing the fully loaded email costs: To analyze the costs of providing email in a way that reveals where costs can be controlled, its important to segment your employees based on what they actually need in email.

So while the top executives would require a fully loaded email solution with Blackberry & Outlook, the middle management and information workers would need most of the email features minus the frills, and the external/field staff can do with basic functional email.

Background

The parent companies - Religare Group and AEGON were both using MS Exchange as their mailing system. So it was natural for AEGON Religare to consider following suit and adopt MS Exchange for its mailing requirements during its inception stage.

However, the Indian financial market conditions are different. The lower transaction value per customer, rapid growth and a highly competitive business environment means lower revenue per employee. The result is a pressure to keep costs low across the board.

Challenge

The key challenge for the IT team at AEGON Religare was to lower the cost of providing e-mail to its fast-growing employee base without compromising on key features and functionalities.


We are always trying to explore ways to manage costs efficiently. And this has been one of the significant projects that we have undertaken to cut costs.

Rajeev Chugh Financial

Controller

The implementation of Connect XD have resulted in impressive savings of between 40 and 50 percent. The results are way beyond our expectations. We have also scale tested the system for up to 20,000 users."

Srinivasan Iyengar Director IT & Operations

Solution

Srinivasan Iyengar, Director IT & Operations, was aware of the cost and scalability benefits offered by Open Source but also did not want to compromise on the features required by the key employees. So he proposed implementing a hybrid solution using a combination of MS Exchange and Open Source Software.

AEGON Religare decided to consider OSS based solutions as a way to lower the cost providing email to its employees. The plan was to extend the MS Exchange 2007 based email set-up for additional users.

The search zeroes down to Mithi

After evaluating a few open source software based email solutions, the AEGON Religare IT team zeroed in on Connect XD from Mithi an open, scalable and adaptable email and collaboration solution. After initial rounds of discussions with the Mithi team and reference checks with Mithis customers, they decided to do a Proof-of-Concept (POC).

Key expectations from the POC

Seamless integration with MS Exchange 2007 for mail-flow

A Shared Address Book across both the two systems

Seamless access through MS Outlook for all users.

Scalability to accommodate rapid growth

Implementation

The POC was a success, and the team decided to go ahead with a plan to have only about 200-250 of its senior executives - those who also needed to work closely with the parent company - on Microsoft Exchange, while the rest of the employees, mostly from branch offices, were to be put onto Connect XD.


Mithi's expertise in hybrid solutions and exemplary support during and post implementation ensured that the implementation was smooth and transparent to most users,

Paras Kothari, Asst. VP, IT

For More Information

For more information about Aegon Religare Life Insurance, please visit http://www.aegonreligare.com

For more information about Mithis products and services, please visit http://www.mithi.com

Mithi Solutions center

Mithi can consult you to understand your requirement, and suggest the best-fit solution on open standards. To know more about how Mithi has helped over 250 of its customers derive benefit from an open solution, please visit http://www.mithi.com.

Mithi team worked closely with the Aegon Religare team led by Mr. Paras Kothari, Assistant VP, IT, to implement the solution while ensuring there were no disruptions in the existing system.

The implementation of Connect XD resulted in impressive savings of between 40 and 50 percent. "The results are way beyond our expectations," says Iyengar. Which is why Iyengar doesn't see the reason why more organizations won't follow his approach given that mailboxes are a commodity. "By default you don't expect much from a mailbox. Unlike an app you don't wonder what business value it can offer or the sort of revenue it can generate. It's just a mailbox, he says.

The Open Source solution is also scalable. Iyengar says he has tested his system for up to 20,000 users. "And I don't have to deal with sophisticated or high-end servers," he says.

Mithi's solution provides automated synchronisation between the Microsoft Active Directory and Open LDAP directory used in Connect XD to offer a global address book accessible to both MS Exchange and Connect XD users.

Benefits

Besides the 40-50% cost benefit on the email infrastructure, some other key benefits provided by Connect XD included -

Same mail domain for the hybrid combination of Exchange and Connect XD

High Reliability Easy Scalability Efficient utilization of IT resources

Encouraged by the savings with Connect XD, Kothari's team recently migrated more than 1000 users from Outlook to Thunderbird to further consolidate the cost gains.

Connect XD

Mithi's Connect XD is currently powering the email systems of over 250 customers in India and abroad.

References

Forrester Research http://www.forrester.com/

Indian life insurance industry http://www.ibef.org/industry/insurance_industry.aspx

Forrester Report on Email Cost Analysis http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/admins/pdf/forrester_cloud_email_cost_analysis.pdf

CIO.in Case Study: Aegon Religare Got Great Savings With an Open Source Email Solution http://www.cio.in/case-study/aegon-religare-used-open-source-email-solution-and-saved

Copyright (c) 2000-2010 Mithi Software Technologies Pvt. Ltd. All rights reserved.

This paper is for informational purposes only. Mithi makes no warranties, express or implied, in this paper. Mithi Software Technologies, Mithi Connect Server, Connect XD, Connect Xf, Mithi Web Mail, Mithi Personal Address Book, Mithi Global Address Book, Mithi Corporate Directory, Baya are trademarks of Mithi Software Technologies. Other product names and brands mentioned in this document are for identification purposes only and may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

For More InformationMithi Solutions centerEmail Costs trigger the search for alternativesCIO.in Case Study: Aegon Religare Got Great Savings With an Open Source Email Solution http://www.cio.in/case-study/aegon-religare-used-open-source-email-solution-and-saved

Aegon Religare Case Study

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