Case study

VMware to OpenShiftZurich + FrankfurtInsurance technology

Spearhead AG.

A two-city OpenShift private cloud for insurance claims technology, moved from VMware without taking production down.

VMware to OpenShiftZurich + FrankfurtInsurance technology

Explore the solution

2 cities

Zurich primary, Frankfurt secondary

2 phases

Development first, then production

3 moves

Same engineering team throughout

0 outage

Live claims stayed on the air

working with the best in the world

The brief

Claims platforms cannot sit on shared metal.

Spearhead digitalises vehicle claims and lifecycle management. Its stack pulls together claims files, telematics and model output, then has to stay available to insurers. The estate needed isolated hardware, a certifiable boundary and a cutover that did not interrupt live claims work.

Customer

Spearhead AG

Sector

Automotive claims and lifecycle

From

VMware private cloud in Zurich

To

OpenShift across Zurich and Frankfurt

Backup

Veeam to Veeam Kasten K10

Constraint

No production outage

The constraints

What made the move hard.

The platform is data-heavy, insurance-facing and already in production. The cut had to protect all three.

01

Isolated hardware

Dedicated metal rather than a shared virtualisation pool, so the insurance boundary stays explicit.

02

Certification pressure

Controls and evidence that match work inside regulated claims processes.

03

A large move

A high count of virtual machines and a large data set, including the backup stack.

04

Two-city availability

A second live location so customers are not tied to a single hall.

Need a platform that can move without taking production down?

The cutover

Prove the path, then move production.

The estate was not lifted in one weekend. Each stage reduced the risk of the next.

01

Plan the cut

Map dependencies, data volumes and the weekend windows that production could tolerate.

02

Move the safe slice

Shift the development platform and archival data first, so the method is proven before live traffic.

03

Cut production

Complete the VMware to OpenShift move with the backup path already on Kasten K10.

04

Stand up Frankfurt

Build a new OpenShift cluster in a second city and run Zurich as primary, Frankfurt as secondary.

From the programme

How it landed.

What the customer and the delivery team said about the work.

View all case studies

A claims platform does not get a long weekend. We proved the path on development and archive, then moved production in a single evening window.
Hyve programme lead
Migration engineering

Zurich stays the primary OpenShift estate. Frankfurt is the second live cluster, so availability is a design property rather than a hope.
Delivery record
Zurich + Frankfurt private cloud

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