Arek Oy: Modernizing Finnish pension management through the cloud
About Arek Oy
Arek is a private limited company owned by its customers. Arek builds and maintains information systems that are necessary in pension insurance, and offers system services that are in the pensions industry’s joint usage.
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About Tietoevry and Accenture
Tietoevry, a Google Cloud partner, is a leading technology company with a turnover of EUR 3 billion and 24,000 experts globally specializing in cloud, data and software.
Google Cloud partner Accenture provides expert IT services and consulting to help companies optimize their technology management.
Arek Oy leverages Anthos and other Google Cloud solutions with the help of partners Tietoevry, Accenture and Heirloom to boost capacity for its core applications and improve pension management for customers.
Google Cloud results
- Addresses data protection regulations while unlocking cloud services
- Reduces infrastructure maintenance and management costs
- Improves parallel processing through enhanced containerization achieved with Google Anthos
- Manages more than 160,000 events per week and scales out as needed post migration
Reduces mainframe use by 50 percent
Arek Oy provides IT services that power programs at pension companies across Finland. The company is committed to innovation and is always looking for ways to become more efficient and agile as it enhances customer services.
Arek wanted to take a hybrid approach to its infrastructure, using a combination of private and public clouds to strengthen its scalability and agility. At the same time, it needed to keep all data protected every step of the way.
Arek had a long-standing relationship with Google Cloud partner Tietoevry for its infrastructure services, and decided to work with the company to migrate some of its systems to the cloud.
Reducing costs with cloud services
Arek targeted some of its mainframe applications to make them more scalable and cost-effective. The company was particularly interested in boosting capacity for its core applications that manage pension calculations and give people results about their pensions in real-time. Additionally, Arek continues to roll out more online services, which the team believes is better powered by cloud services for faster and more intuitive capabilities.
Arek was challenged when it came to scaling cost-effectively and quickly to support more users. This slowed its time to market for introducing customer services. Arek recognized that leveraging Google Cloud with the help of Tietoevry would not only reduce the costs of scaling, but also enable it to accelerate delivering customer services.
With pension services requiring complex calculations, Arek set out to eliminate outdated networks that could slow response times by as much as 30 seconds. When evaluating Google Cloud solutions, the company realized it could greatly reduce IT complexity to accelerate response times and gain better control over CPU use.
Tietoevry recommended Anthos to manage Arek’s CPU-intensive calculation application, which required 15 million lines of code to run on the mainframe. By migrating the application to Anthos, the company has achieved 0.4 second response time for code, while making it easier for Arek to scale up when customers need more power or capacity with increased throughput capabilities. In addition, Arek freed up 50 percent of its mainframe capacity as a result of the migration.
Arek can now manage and run CPUs to speed service delivery while reducing costs compared to legacy infrastructure.
Tietoevry continues to provide advanced IT support and Google Cloud expertise to optimize Arek services. Trust in the partner allows Arek to focus on delivering outstanding customer services and not get bogged down by IT maintenance and management requirements.
Tietoevry offered invaluable knowledge and support to address Arek’s business needs and migrate the critical applications customers need 24/7 with minimal downtime and disruption.
Leveraging additional white-glove support from a trusted partner
As part of the re-platforming, Arek tapped the support of Google Cloud partner Accenture. In all, Arek’s mainframe application was running data analyses on 22 million lines of code and 7,000 COBOL modules. To minimize disruption and ensure a positive outcome post-migration, Arek leaned on Accenture to map out the process and guide a new, more scalable DevOps pipeline.
Accenture provided guidance, gathered requirements, and executed proof-of-concept projects to help Arek comfortably navigate the large number of moving parts. Thanks to the combination of Google Cloud technologies and work from both Accenture and Tietoevry, Arek completed its migration in under a year and instantly began to see positive results.
Maintaining data sovereignty and compliance in the cloud
Arek works closely with its customers to understand their needs and preferred practices to protect data and meet regulations governing employee data. Data security regulations in Finland and the rest of the European Union are strict, especially regarding personally identifiable information.
Companies in the region require comprehensive data access control including role-based access for varying types of personnel, as well as visibility into changes across cloud infrastructure and services that could impact security. Further, data protection must extend to the locality control, as companies need to know that their data is not being moved out of region.
Google Cloud works with Arek and companies across the region to provide all of these regulatory compliance and security capabilities and provide a pathway into cloud infrastructure without sacrificing control.
Arek believes that moving to the public cloud is a big part of its future, and is conducting workshops with customers to best understand how it can use Public Cloud to boost infrastructure performance while maintaining compliance with GDPR.
Visibility and transparency are critical elements of maintaining data sovereignty, and Google Cloud offers the controls necessary to know where data resides at all times. Arek keeps its information in data centers in Finland while restricting access to the information and systems outside of the country.
As regulations evolve, Arek will have opportunities to maintain strong IT security performance while expanding its cloud infrastructure.
Continuing the move to Anthos
Thanks to its success thus far, Arek is exploring other applications to migrate to Anthos and is working closely with Google Cloud, Tietoevry, and its customers to know which ones will be best served by the cloud.
Arek believes Google Cloud is the right choice for its cloud transformation because the more open environment supports a true multicloud environment and does not result in vendor lock-in. With Anthos, Arek has the flexibility to adopt the best on-prem and cloud services to most readily address business needs."
Arek’s partnership with Tietoevry and Accenture is opening up new possibilities, and its experiences with Google Cloud and Anthos enable it to deliver much faster, more cost-effective services. This translates to better pension management experiences for customers.
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact us
About Arek Oy
Arek is a private limited company owned by its customers. Arek builds and maintains information systems that are necessary in pension insurance, and offers system services that are in the pensions industry’s joint usage.
About Tietoevry and Accenture
Tietoevry, a Google Cloud partner, is a leading technology company with a turnover of EUR 3 billion and 24,000 experts globally specializing in cloud, data and software.
Google Cloud partner Accenture provides expert IT services and consulting to help companies optimize their technology management.