Our Work

Vitality Group has built a massively flexible and scalable platform for its Vitality wellness solution using a microservices architecture. To improve the stability, speed of deployment and performance of the Vitality solution for customers—leading insurers across the globe—specialist software solution provider Synthesis has redesigned the underlying Kubernetes container orchestration platform on which the Vitality application is deployed.  Says Neil Adamson, CIO of the Discovery Vitality Group: “Vitality has a global client base with different needs that must comply with different regulations, so we cannot run a single instance of the Vitality app. We consequently have a number of cloud-based instances hosted in various geographical areas across the globe. A microservices architecture works well, enabling us to more easily adapt the solution for each customer. However, we were not achieving the performance we needed.  “Our manually-built Kubernetes environment—the underlying microservices platform which enables custom configuration, orchestration and deployment of Vitality microservices for our clients across regions—was not providing us with the stability or the uniformity we required. Nor was it allowing us to roll out the solution (a six-week journey), or apply changes to the solution as quickly as we would like.  “Synthesis proposed a fully automated ‘infrastructure as code’ approach to provisioning the infrastructure and deploying the relevant software applications. With its deep Amazon Web Services, DevOps and Kubernetes experience and skills, it has re-architected and redeployed the Vitality solution across eight global regions in just four months, helping us achieve huge service, quality and performance gains by making adaptation and deployment of the Vitality app an automated, repeatable and auditable process.  “In effect, it’s given us greater control and flexibility. And with Synthesis now monitoring, managing and continuously optimising the underlying Kubernetes platform, we can focus on doing what we most need to—adding value to our clients.”  What is Vitality?  The Vitality wellness platform helps insurers or insurance companies encourage the wellness of their members via three components: know your health, improve your health and get rewarded. These drivers are enabled through features such as online and real world health assessments, incentivising and measuring healthy behaviours through personal devices (fitness devices and trackers such as Fitbit, Garmin and Apple and Samsung watches), and by rewarding members when they reach goals or make healthy choices.  Vitality clients include AIA in Asia, Manulife in Canada, John Hancock in the US, Vitality Life and Health in the UK, Generali in Europe and Sumitomo in Japan. Hanover Re has also recently adopted Vitality to reach into smaller insurance markets such as Pakistan and Ecuador.  However, each client typically will need to adapt the features of the platform to achieve the best outcomes for its members.  Explains Adamson: “For Sumitomo in Japan, a single full stack instance of the platform provides the data privacy demanded by regulatory authorities. At the other end of the scale, we run a multi-tenanted environment in Frankfurt for a number of European and central Asian insurers. We thus have multiple runtimes.”