LWCC is a model single-state, private mutual workers’ comp provider and a Champion of Louisiana dedicated to excellence in execution from underwriting to the compassionate care of an injured worker. LWCC is proud to partner with agents and together deliver outstanding service to policyholders while fostering a culture of well-being in the state’s workforce. More than a tagline, Louisiana Loyal is a movement LWCC launched to celebrate and elevate Louisiana through its core business functions and innovative new initiatives.
Safety, security, and stability are key for LWCC, and even a brief interruption could significantly impact the services it provides. To keep operations up and running at their best, LWCC migrated its legacy three-tier infrastructure to a Nutanix hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) solution, featuring Nutanix DRaaS (Disaster Recovery as a Service). Nutanix has simplified administrative tasks for IT in maintaining the infrastructure, and has helped maximize the availability of key services, providing a springboard for continued innovation of services.
| Streamlined management | Improved business continuity | Accelerated innovation |
|---|---|---|
| Consolidated high-performing platform saves money and minimizes need for different administrative tools and skills | Nutanix DRaaS (Disaster Recovery as a Service) ensures nonstop availability of LWCC services | Leading-edge platform provides performance and scalability needed to support new services and enhances the ability to accelerate delivery of new innovative solutions |
As we evaluate new insurance products, services and digital technologies, Nutanix gives us the environment we need to support new innovation and processes that might differ from some of our legacy core applications.
For a leading worker’s compensation insurer like LWCC, maximizing the availability of services is critical, not only for its employees, but also for its agent partners helping serve over 20,000 policyholders across Louisiana.
“We depend on our infrastructure to support all our key processes, and even a brief failure would be significant for us from a business standpoint,” said Gary Sanders, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at LWCC.
LWCC is Louisiana Loyal, a movement it launched and continues to lead to celebrate and elevate Louisiana in pursuit of its mission to help Louisiana thrive. Providing best-in-class workers’ comp insurance requires constantly evolving to lead in the field. To accomplish this, LWCC initiated plans to migrate its legacy three-tier infrastructure to a single hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) platform.
“We needed a platform that would provide high performance and scalability while supporting core services and our long-range vision of seeking out new ways to innovate,” said Sanders. “From a technical and talent management standpoint, we also wanted to consolidate multiple different products onto a single solution.”
Cost savings was also an important consideration for LWCC. Consolidating vendors would enable the organization to reduce the number of licenses and platforms that it was required to maintain, enhance cyber security, and assist in talent management and support for IT staff.
After considering a variety of solutions, LWCC decided to bring together its separate platforms on the Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure.
“We have three separate Nutanix clusters implemented, with segmentation to support all of our critical technology stacks and cyber security needs.,” said Sanders.
LWCC relies on Nutanix to support its main site with about 230 internal users, as well as external agents, policyholders, injured workers, and partners. This solution supports internal users onsite, as well as in hybrid environments.
“The switchover process was smooth, and the Nutanix Move software that we used for migration copied everything at block level,” said Jeremy Schmitt, IT Infrastructure Manager at LWCC. “We did some IP re-addressing when we moved over to Nutanix, and everything was seamless.”
LWCC also deployed Nutanix DRaaS (Disaster Recovery as a Service), a cloud-based offering that supports one-click failover and non-disruptive testing, making it easy for the organization to align business continuity to changing needs.
“All of our backbone servers are running on Nutanix. Our DR plan has shifted from an offsite, hosted platform to the Nutanix DRaaS (Disaster Recovery as a Service) solution,” said Sanders. “We have redundancy set up with replication policies, and all of our on-prem machines are being replicated there.”
Results
Moving to Nutanix has enabled LWCC to streamline its administrative operations, saving time and money on day-to-day network operations.
“Nutanix helps our IT team work more effectively, because it minimizes the need for employees to learn multiple platforms, multiple technologies, and different management tasks. The move has also provided huge benefits to talent management and skills needs, helping address enterprise risks around technical talent during the current environment,” said Sanders.
With Nutanix DRaaS (Disaster Recovery as a Service), LWCC can also be assured that its critical services will stay up and running in a high-performing, cost-effective, and easy -to-manage way.
“The Nutanix solution gave us new options to support our business continuity program,” said Sanders. “Our previous solution was not only expensive, but also took a great deal of overhead to manage.”
“In addition to a sound DR deployment, Nutanix DRaaS gives us much more control over our testing,” adds Sanders. “It gives us the ability to progress from a test to actual deployment to a production environment that same business day, if we need to.”
Nutanix solutions also help LWCC manage IT costs and streamline operations, supporting an organizational priority of disciplined execution and allowing the organization to better leverage financial resources to help Louisiana thrive.
With its new HCI infrastructure in place, LWCC has set up a more scalable, manageable platform that not only provides dependable performance today, but also serves as a springboard for continued innovation in the years to come.