Unifying operations for critical systems on AWS Outposts with Aflac Japan

To improve stability, reduce operational burden, and support digital and AI transformation, Aflac Japan began building its 5-year modernization road map on AWS. The cloud migration would provide flexible, scalable, and resilient infrastructure to support insurance systems. But some critical applications, including those for processing insurance claims payments, required ultra-low latency. Even 15 ms of round-trip delay could slow responses across the system and affect both internal operations and customers.

The company wanted to avoid dual operations across AWS and its existing on-premises environment to simplify operational management. “When considering architectural standards and operational management efficiency, we concluded that it would be better to implement the same AWS solutions that we were already using,” says Masazumi Muto, IT Infrastructure Operations and Management Department, Aflac Japan. “This is how we came to use AWS Outposts.”

To modernize its highly latency-sensitive applications and systems, Aflac Japan deployed AWS Outposts across its production and disaster recovery (DR) environments. The company worked with Kyndryl and AWS experts to incorporate AWS Outposts into a network architecture that spanned its cloud and on-premises environments. Because Aflac Japan operates interconnected data centers across different locations, the team needed to design for multiple networking patterns across environments, including production, development, and DR. This would connect workloads that were running on AWS Outposts with systems in different Regions and with mainframe-connected applications in Aflac Japan’s data centers.

Before migrating its production workloads, Aflac Japan completed a proof of concept to validate how AWS Outposts would function inside its existing data center environment. To manage AWS Outposts consistently with the workloads that run in different Regions, the team evaluated network requirements, operational processes, backup approaches, and equipment replacement workflows. Aflac Japan benefited from the expertise of both Kyndryl and AWS to address the complexities of the migration. “Kyndryl and AWS specialists were involved throughout the process, and we conducted the verification by gathering knowledge from all three companies,” says Yoko Nakamura, IT Infrastructure Operations and Management Department, Aflac Japan.

The insurer migrated two of its highly critical mainframe-connected systems to two AWS Outposts rack units, each connected to a separate Availability Zone. This architecture improved availability and resilience while helping Aflac Japan run systems close to the mainframe by using AWS tools and operational practices.

By deploying AWS Outposts, Aflac Japan achieves consistency and efficiency across every environment. The company now manages all its systems—both in Regions and on premises—with a single set of AWS services, logs, backups, and operational standards. This standardized foundation keeps the insurer’s cloud-migration road map on track, making it possible to move workloads progressively to Regions as they become ready.

A full cloud migration remains Aflac Japan’s long-term goal. And by unifying operations across Regions and on premises, AWS Outposts bridges that path while accelerating the company’s broader digital and AI transformation. “Using AWS, we’ve been able to collaborate efficiently with Aflac US by establishing a common language for design and operation,” says Satoshi Masaki, IT Infrastructure Operations and Management Department, Aflac Japan.