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Nationwide embraces DevOps, improves software quality by 50 percent
Technology Category
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - API Integration & Management
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration
Applicable Functions
- Discrete Manufacturing
- Product Research & Development
Use Cases
- Manufacturing System Automation
- Predictive Maintenance
Services
- Software Design & Engineering Services
- System Integration
The Challenge
Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co., one of the world’s largest insurance and financial services companies, needed to improve its market responsiveness. The company was highly dependent on technology and was facing a fast-paced, highly regulated industry with new products and services that needed to be delivered quickly. Ten years ago, Nationwide used primarily waterfall development methodologies to create the software products that its members, customers and agents use online. However, the gap between software requirements and product delivery with the waterfall method had caused a rift between IT and the business. Recognizing the value it could achieve by embracing lean and agile practices at scale for its enterprise, Nationwide began shifting from waterfall to agile development.
About The Customer
Over the past 80 years, Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. has grown from a small mutual auto insurer owned by policyholders into one of the world’s largest insurance and financial services companies, with more than USD135 billion in statutory assets. Headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, Nationwide has an IT staff of more than 5,000 employees working in various locations across the country. The company needed to improve its market responsiveness due to its high dependence on technology in a highly regulated industry with changes coming at a very fast pace. New products and services needed to hit the street, making the software delivery lifecycle pertinent to the success of the business.
The Solution
Nationwide engaged IBM to support its agile transformation and help enable a DevOps approach to application development and delivery across its distributed and mainframe environments. Nationwide has operationalized agile practices across IT, lines of business and the entire delivery lifecycle, as well as across technology domains that include the existing mainframe, distributed systems and business intelligence data solutions. Using a DevOps approach, Nationwide can now perform continuous integration of its code and continuous deployment into its development environment several times a day. Teams can also perform acceptance testing of customer requirements in the same iteration with development. And they can show the customer, in near-real time, what developers are producing. This almost immediate feedback helps ensure that what’s being produced is going to meet the customer’s needs.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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