In an era where technological advancements dictate the pace of industries, MetLife Asia has taken a significant step forward by integrating Azure DevOps into its software development cycle. This strategic move has not only improved efficiency but also enhanced the quality of development and deployment processes. The transformation was spearheaded by MetLife Asia’s CIO, Siew Choo Soh, who revealed that with the adoption of Azure DevOps, the time for automated tests and builds has dramatically decreased from nearly eight hours to under an hour. This impressive reduction in time is just one of the many benefits of transitioning to a DevOps framework. The integration of regularly scheduled scans has also played a crucial role in improving code quality and promptly addressing vulnerabilities, saving approximately 15 minutes per build per developer and enabling earlier error detection.
Expanding Services Across Regions
MetLife Asia provides vital insurance services in several countries, including Australia, China, India, Japan, Malaysia, and Vietnam. Their development efforts primarily concentrate on crafting Java and ReactJS mobile applications for essential functions such as policy registration, profile updates, policy inquiries, and claim submissions. Additionally, they have developed applications that support value-added services like scheduling doctor appointments and facilitating direct video calls with doctors. Previously, MetLife relied heavily on manual testing processes, a practice that resulted in significant inefficiencies, with builds taking as long as eight hours and errors often being detected only after deployment. This hampered their ability to meet growing customer demands quickly and accurately, thereby necessitating a revolutionary change in their development cycles.
By adopting Azure DevOps, MetLife aimed to address these inefficiencies and streamline their software development lifecycle. The goal was to standardize build pipelines to include a continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) approach, allowing for more scalable and efficient deployments across regions. Azure Boards played a critical role in ensuring efficient project management, while Azure Repos provided scalable Git repositories for source code management. Azure Pipelines automated the build and deployment processes, simplifying the task of deploying applications to the target environment seamlessly. This unified approach not only improved productivity but also significantly bolstered application deployment security by adhering to standardized, automated processes.
Enhancing Development Security Operations
The integration of Azure DevOps into MetLife’s workflow significantly enhanced their development security operations (DevSecOps). Developers aimed to align with industry standards regionally to ensure their applications met rigorous security requirements. Before Azure DevOps, the growth in application size and number challenged scalable and secure development. The new DevOps framework offered a comprehensive solution, automating quality checks and integrating security models into the build pipelines, ensuring higher reliability and consistency in deployments.
Teams adopted a test-and-learn approach to refine processes, making standards implementation seamless. The full adoption of Azure DevOps took six months, granting end-to-end traceability. This enabled MetLife to better protect customer information, access real-time updates and performance trends for releases, and make faster, more informed decisions. Soh emphasized the company’s commitment to evolving its infrastructure and processes, showcasing a proactive approach to growth in a competitive industry.
The successful Azure DevOps integration has made MetLife Asia a leader in the insurance industry’s tech evolution. Leveraging Azure DevOps, MetLife has increased efficiency and quality in their development cycles, paving the way for innovation and improved customer satisfaction. This strategic move underscores MetLife’s commitment to a secure development environment while enhancing services to meet ever-changing customer needs.