What challenges did AXIS Capital face before AI implementation?

Operating two physical data centers created complexity, high infrastructure costs, limited scalability, and slow all-or-nothing disaster recovery. AXIS needed a resilient platform that could support global operations and future data-driven underwriting and decisioning.

What was the impact of the AI solution?

A mortgage analytics workload scaled from about 40 vCPUs and nearly 48 hours to 40,000 CPUs and roughly 90 minutes. The migration helped AXIS avoid future capital expenditures tied to infrastructure refreshes. AXIS strengthened operational resilience and created a scalable cloud foundation for analytics, automation, and AI.

Source

MicrosoftProductionEvidence: Medium65/100

AXIS Capital migrates data centers to Azure to enable analytics, automation, and AI; improves DR speed and elasticity

Use case typeCloud migrationUpdated Jun 14, 2026

AXIS Capital, a global specialty insurer and reinsurer, migrated its infrastructure from two physical data centers to Azure using a migrate-first, modernize-second strategy. The migration created a cloud foundation for advanced analytics, automation, and AI while reducing infrastructure complexity and improving disaster recovery.

Organization: AXIS Capital
Industry: Insurance
Location: United States
Published: June 2026

Reported outcomes

10 months

data center exit timelineOther quantified impact

96.9%analytics runtime100,000%analytics scale

Strategic outcomes

Risk & complianceFaster, more selective disaster recoveryCost efficiencyAvoided future infrastructure capital expendituresInnovation & cultureEstablished a foundation for analytics, automation, and AI

Why do we believe this?Outcome claims, sources, and evidence checks

Normalized claim

Analytics runtime: 96.9%

Microsoft Customer StoriesJun 14, 2026Customer storyInferred claimMedium evidence strength

from approximately 40 virtual CPUs and nearly 48 hours to scale to 40,000 CPUs, reducing runtime to roughly 90 minutes

Normalized claim

Analytics scale: 100,000%

Microsoft Customer StoriesJun 14, 2026Customer storyExplicit claimMedium evidence strength

from approximately 40 virtual CPUs to 40,000 CPUs

Normalized claim

Data center exit timeline: 10 months

Microsoft Customer StoriesJun 14, 2026Customer storyExplicit claimMedium evidence strength

the company completed the full data center exit in under ten months

Why do we believe this deployment?Customer identity, provider attribution, maturity, and source checks

Customer: AXIS Capital
Provider: Microsoft
Maturity: Production
Linked source: Microsoft Customer Stories

AXIS strengthened operational resilience and created a scalable cloud foundation for analytics, automation, and AI

Customer identity supportedSource describes one deploymentMaturity supported

Primary read

Use case focus

Showing 2 of 2

1Cloud migration
2Forecasting and budgeting

Operating two physical data centers created complexity, high infrastructure costs, limited scalability, and slow all-or-nothing disaster recovery.
AXIS needed a resilient platform that could support global operations and future data-driven underwriting and decisioning.

AXIS migrated its Amsterdam disaster recovery environment to Azure using Azure VMware Solution and NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP in a pilot-light architecture.
The company then exited its Boston primary data center and used Azure Site Recovery to assess workloads, right-size infrastructure, and strengthen resilience.
The broader Azure environment includes Azure Web Apps, Azure SQL, Azure Storage, Azure Key Vault, and DevOps-driven infrastructure-as-code pipelines supporting analytics and automation.

Technologies

Azure VMware Solution NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP Azure Site Recovery Azure Web Apps Azure SQL Azure Storage Azure Key Vault Databricks

A mortgage analytics workload scaled from about 40 vCPUs and nearly 48 hours to 40,000 CPUs and roughly 90 minutes.
The migration helped AXIS avoid future capital expenditures tied to infrastructure refreshes.
AXIS strengthened operational resilience and created a scalable cloud foundation for analytics, automation, and AI.

Architecture

AXIS executed a migrate-first, modernize-second migration to Azure. The solution used Azure VMware Solution and NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP for a pilot-light disaster recovery architecture, Azure Site Recovery for assessment and right-sizing, and Azure Web Apps, Azure SQL, Azure Storage, and Azure Key Vault in the broader platform. The migration of the Boston data center was completed in under ten months, and analytics workloads were scaled dramatically in Azure.

Sources & evidence1

Evidence: Medium65/100Evidence strength