Insurance Firm Modernizes IT with Citrix Cloud Migration
Industry
Insurance
Customer
Midwestern specialty insurance provider (anonymized)
Our client is a Midwest-based specialty insurer that relies heavily on Citrix to deliver applications and secure sensitive customer data. Operating under strict regulatory oversight, the company must meet stringent compliance standards to protect policyholder information and maintain customer trust.
Key Highlights
Situation
Situation
Like many insurance firms, the company’s IT environment was built over time around on-premises infrastructure. While reliable in the past, this environment had grown harder to manage. Aging hardware was nearing end-of-life, upgrades were disruptive, and forecasting infrastructure needs was nearly impossible in a business where the workforce expands and contracts with market cycles.
Citrix had long been the backbone for delivering applications securely, but the insurer’s IT leaders knew the on-premises model was no longer sustainable. They needed an approach that could scale with the business, reduce the burden of managing infrastructure, and still meet strict compliance requirements.
Problem
The insurer faced two converging challenges:
Aging on-premises infrastructure required costly replacements and created downtime risks.
A variable workforce made it difficult to size and budget accurately for on-premises systems.
IT leadership realized that maintaining control planes and gateways in-house was consuming valuable time that could be spent on higher-value work. Each upgrade carried the risk of downtime, and the support team was becoming increasingly reactive rather than proactive.
The business needed a path forward that would reduce infrastructure overhead, improve agility, and still deliver the reliability and security their regulators and customers expected.
Solution
The company partnered with X-Centric IT Solutions to modernize its Citrix environment by moving to Citrix Cloud Services. The migration was structured in phases to minimize disruption.
Control Plane Migration
X-Centric first moved the Citrix control plane and access infrastructure to Citrix Cloud.
This shift placed core management functions, such as Delivery Controllers, licensing, monitoring, and Citrix Studio, into Citrix’s cloud platform. The client’s IT team no longer needs to manage these components on-premises.
Desktop Infrastructure Migration
Once the control plane was stable, the team migrated desktop workloads into Microsoft Azure, where the insurer could scale up or down as needed.
Tools such as Cloud Connectors, Gateway Service, Workspace Environment Management, Monitoring & Analytics provided centralized management and visibility.
By adopting Citrix Cloud’s management plane, the firm got a modern foundation that reduced IT complexity while enabling secure, remote-friendly access to applications and desktops.
Operational Impact
The migration delivered immediate benefits for both IT staff and end users.
Less time managing infrastructure – IT staff no longer had to patch or maintain backend servers.
Reduced downtime during upgrades – Cloud-based services ensured smoother transitions with minimal to no prolonged outages.
Lower hardware costs – Decommissioning physical servers reduced capital expenses.
More focus on end users – Freed from backend maintenance, IT teams could dedicate more time to servicing employees and business units.
Users noticed faster access to applications, fewer interruptions, and more consistent performance across locations. Onboarding times improved, and day-to-day work became less frustrating for employees.
Business Outcomes
Improved Productivity
Employees experienced fewer system interruptions and faster access to applications. With login times cut from minutes to seconds, productivity increased, and frustration decreased.
Agility in Deployment
New features and capabilities were rolled out faster thanks to automatic cloud updates. The insurer could support seasonal workforce changes without over-provisioning hardware.
Reduced Risk and Stronger Continuity
Cloud-hosted infrastructure improved disaster recovery capabilities. If a local outage occurred, employees could still access systems securely through Citrix Cloud’s multi-region architecture.
Operational Efficiency
Help desk tickets related to system access were dropped, allowing IT to resolve issues more quickly. Staff who previously spent hours on infrastructure upkeep shifted their focus to projects that directly supported the business.
