The best of both worlds at CM ICT
The Hybrid Cloud guarantees both CM members and employees a robust yet flexible IT environment.
How do CM's IT people accomplish this? We would like to tell you our story.
Robust and flexible IT infrastructure? There is the Hybrid Cloud!
It is alive and well at CM. Three million transactions are processed every day, worth 50 million euros in payouts. This requires a stable and robust infrastructure. At the same time, we also want to respond quickly to customer expectations, inside and outside the organization. A smooth user experience for employees and members is central. With a Hybrid Cloud strategy, we want to provide an answer to all our challenges with ICT.
And challenges abound with CM's more than 400 core applications. Applications that help both our 4.5 million members and our 7,500 colleagues. All this within the healthcare ecosystem where digitalization plays an increasingly important role.
'Our organization is no longer the walled fortress it once was,' says Bruno Leunens, ICT Service Delivery Manager within IT infrastructure. 'The challenge today is finding the balance between the accessibility and security of our system. And to lay a rock-solid foundation that can still cope with rapid changes. The Hybrid Cloud is really something for IT professionals to sink their teeth into.'
7,500 colleagues who work efficiently every day and everywhere thanks to the Hybrid Cloud.
Bruno
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Legacy IT and complex organization? Hybrid Cloud is a no-brainer
Due to corona, many of our 7,500 CM colleagues suddenly worked from home. This was also possible in a productive way with the Office 365 package in the cloud. Our members have recently been able to consult their health data via the CM app . Again, via the cloud. But not all applications are suitable for this.
'Our extensive portfolio of corporate applications includes a great deal of variety in terms of size, age, technology used... We cannot and do not want to simply lift all those systems and place them in the cloud. Not every application can run efficiently in this environment, so a cloud migration must be a well-considered choice.'
'That is why we combine our own internal (on-premise) data centers with cloud solutions, such as those from Google, Amazon and Microsoft (Azure). Together with our colleagues from Development, Architecture and Security, we ensure that every application ends up on the most suitable infrastructure platform. And that is the core of our Hybrid Cloud strategy.'
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Multidisciplinary teams for complex IT issues
'We ensure a good balance within our infrastructure: as accessible as possible, but also sufficiently safe. After all, we work with confidential information such as personal and medical data," says Koen Crabbe, Director of ICT Infrastructure Services.
These complex issues make it extra important to work with multidisciplinary teams. And they also transcend departmental boundaries. For example, our IT infrastructure cannot function without colleagues from 'Security'. We are gradually evolving towards a DevSecOps culture within CM. In this way, these three domains become detached from their island and become one.
Agile working within Infrastructure
Koen: 'Everyone within our 88-person team has their own specialties. Our work consists of bringing together the necessary specialties to build and maintain a valuable “product” for our customers.'
'Just like with an orchestra, team spirit and mutual coordination are crucial,' adds Bruno. 'If you want a piece to sound good, you have to listen carefully and be attuned to each other. You not only need to know what is on your score, but also how your part fits into the bigger picture. This way you avoid false notes.'
To get that symphony right, the IT infrastructure teams work according to the Kanban method. This makes it easier to visualize, predict and monitor the workload. 'We work in cycles of 4 weeks in which we prioritize the work - together with our customers.'
A flexible and future-proof roadmap for infrastructure
'No matter how simple things seem to our members and internal customers, what happens behind the scenes is often extremely ingenious. Our infrastructure is therefore always in motion. Are the needs changing? Then our infrastructure will evolve along with it,” says Koen. 'We provide an answer to these challenges with our hybrid core roadmap. And with innovative infrastructure projects around containers, automation, hybrid core infrastructure, network security... we bring this roadmap to life.'
'For those who want to sink their teeth into complex IT challenges, CM is one big amusement park,' adds Bruno. 'At CM we have a spider web of services that need to be able to run anywhere. Often around the clock. And there are always new challenges.'
And what is CM looking for in future IT colleagues?
According to Koen and Bruno, the most important thing is that you are prepared to embrace all these challenges. 'Customer friendliness, collaboration, creativity, flexibility, maturity... These are the qualities we look for in our employees.'
Do you want to sink your teeth into complex IT challenges?
Our IT projects take shape thanks to diverse IT profiles .
Where does your expertise lie? At CM you get the opportunity to work on the projects that interest you most: from AI to apps, from OCR to NLP.
Would you like to strengthen our agile teams?
More than ever, we make our ICT environment accessible to the outside world.
Koen
We cannot simply put all our systems in the cloud. That is why we combine our data centers with cloud solutions.
Bruno
Just like with an orchestra, team spirit is very important. If you want a piece to sound good, you have to play together.
Bruno
