The Background

With over $223 billion in assets under management, this Fortune 500 financial services company offers a diverse range of financial services and solutions such as life insurance, annuities, retirement plan services, and group protection. Led by over 9,000 employees, the company provides the tools and advice to help 17 million customers take charge of their futures.

The Challenges

The company has more than 10 data centers located across the U.S. with legacy infrastructure and high maintenance costs. The IT staff had limited situational awareness of its data centers, which often resulted in herculean efforts to maintain operational stability, and an inability to properly manage its budget. The company’s goal was to streamline its data center footprint and change from a vendor-insured to a self-insured disaster recovery (DR) program.

In addition to an overworked data center management team, we were challenged by aging IT infrastructure. We needed a third party to evaluate our current condition.


The Solution

Advocate conducted a current state assessment and gap analysis of the company’s data center and disaster recovery services environment, recommended future state scenarios and provided supporting total cost of ownership modeling and analysis. The company selected the aggressive future state scenario to consolidate more than 10 data centers to several colocation facilities and to self-insure their disaster recovery capabilities, when combined will result in IT savings of over $30M over the next 10 years.

Transforming infrastructure challenges into a strategic advantage.

Transforming many data center challenges by strategically consolidating them into several colocations, while providing full situational awareness and visibility, resulting in significant cost savings.

Our company is looking forward to saving $30M in IT spend over the next 10 years and improving our situational awareness and visibility.


The Result



  • The company has selected Advocate’s aggressive future state scenario, which consolidates more than 10 data centers to several colocations, and will change from a vendor-insured to self-insured disaster recovery program.

  • With Advocate’s future state roadmap, the company will increase its situational awareness and visibility, while reducing aging legacy IT infrastructure and maintenance costs.

  • Over the next 10 years, the company will realize over $30M in IT savings.