Insurance Systems Look Simple, but the Infrastructure Isn’t

Insurance transactions have become frequent flyers. A homeowners or auto insurance quote might start in a mobile app, continue through a web portal, and finish with an agent in a contact center. What feels like one interaction actually moves through multiple systems behind the scenes, relying on the infrastructure connecting data centers, cloud platforms, and digital services.

Inside these insurance IT environments, legacy systems are often the biggest bottlenecks to innovation. According to PwC research, insurers spend roughly 70 percent of their annual IT budgets maintaining legacy technology environments. Core policy platforms, claims systems, and underwriting applications still run on technology that has supported insurers for decades, and many of these systems remain deeply embedded in data centers.

Industry analysts note that modern insurance infrastructure is increasingly hybrid. As McKinsey & Company explains, “A hybrid cloud infrastructure, which combines on-premises data centers with public cloud environments, should be designed to ensure scalability.” Delaying modernization creates technical debt, making systems harder to monitor. The problem is that while infrastructure has evolved, the tools some insurers use to monitor it remain stuck in the past.

This is particularly challenging because data centers support the core systems insurers depend on most, while cloud services extend digital reach. Whether it is a policy lookup or a claims submission, transactions must pass through multiple databases. The network connects these systems so modern insurance experiences remain frictionless.

When Legacy Monitoring Cannot Keep Up

Many insurers have modernized applications and infrastructure over the past decade. Observability and security strategies, however, often reflect an earlier generation of IT operations. Traditional monitoring tools were designed for environments where applications ran primarily inside the data center, and service dependencies were easier to trace. Modern insurance operations teams now manage systems that include:

• Hybrid infrastructure across data centers, colocation sites, cloud providers, and software-as-a-service (SaaS) platforms
• Digital services connecting mobile apps, web portals, and contact centers
• Application programming interfaces (APIs) linking insurers to partners, agents, and external data providers
• Hundreds to thousands of application services supporting policy, claims, and customer operations across data centers, cloud platforms, and SaaS providers
• Technology sprawl from mergers, acquisitions, and digital initiatives
• Massive volumes of east-west traffic moving between core data center systems

In these environments, disruptions rarely originate from a single system.

Why the Network Reveals What Telemetry Misses

Many observability strategies rely on metrics, events, logs, and traces (MELT), a form of telemetry generated by applications or infrastructure platforms. While these signals provide useful insight, they do not always show how services actually communicate. For example, logs can be incomplete, and traces often stop at the edge of specific environments or miss legacy systems that do not support modern instrumentation.

The network offers a different vantage point. Every application request, database query, or claims transaction must travel across infrastructure before reaching its destination. Observing network activity allows operations teams to see how services interact in real time and uncover dependencies that may not appear in application dashboards.

This becomes especially valuable in hybrid environments where systems link multiple data centers, cloud providers, and digital platforms. Network intelligence also adds context for security teams. As insurers expand digital channels and partner integrations, the same infrastructure carrying policyholder transactions can reveal unusual traffic patterns or early indicators of cyberthreats.

Building Observability for Modern Insurance Infrastructure

Understanding how digital interactions move across insurance environments is essential for reliable policyholder and agent experiences. NETSCOUT nGenius solutions for observability, including nGeniusONE and InfiniStreamNG appliances, provide packet-level insight into network and application activity across hybrid environments, helping teams understand how critical services behave.

Read this case study to learn why a Fortune 100 insurer replaced its legacy monitoring tools with NETSCOUT nGenius solutions for observability.