Penn Mutual cuts VMware modernization timeline by 25% using AWS

Penn Mutual, a life insurance company in operation since 1847, is known for combining long-term stability with a forward-looking approach to technology. As part of its cloud modernization journey, the company had already migrated a majority of its infrastructure out of on-premises data centers and onto VMware Cloud on AWS. This reduced its physical footprint and made it possible for the company to begin a digital transformation as a cloud-based company.

But when changes in how VMware Cloud on AWS could be purchased created new urgency, Penn Mutual took a fresh look at its IT strategy and migration road map. To maintain momentum, the company began exploring a path toward adopting more native AWS services.

At the time, Penn Mutual was managing nearly 900 VMs across 22 hosts, with limited fallback infrastructure. Some legacy systems were nearing renewal, and key workloads still depended on third-party-managed mainframes. Long-term licensing constraints added complexity, and Penn Mutual wanted greater flexibility to avoid vendor lock-in. Plus, an enterprise-wide shift to remote operations heightened the need for scalable, secure infrastructure. With a lean IT team, Penn Mutual needed a clear, strategic path forward. It was the right moment to move forward with modernization and cloud migration.

Recognizing both the urgency and the opportunity, Penn Mutual worked closely alongside AWS to design a flexible migration plan. From day one, AWS assembled a dedicated team of specialists in VMware and Microsoft workloads, storage, disaster recovery, and migration strategy. Weekly check-ins—and plenty of near real-time collaboration—helped the joint team assess risks, plan next steps, and stay on schedule. “The AWS team really became an extension of our own,” said Greg Driscoll, chief information officer at Penn Mutual. “The team’s ability to bring the right people into the conversation at the right time helped us move faster and more confidently.” Implementation was led internally, with Penn Mutual using its DevOps pipelines to rebuild applications on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), which provides secure and resizable compute capacity for virtually any workload. This approach helped the team make in-flight updates that reduced technical debt, like replacing Red Hat Linux with Amazon Linux 2023, making it possible for Penn Mutual to use the latest AWS features and access an integrated experience optimized for Amazon EC2. With AWS support always within reach, Penn Mutual modernized on its own terms.

To inform decisions, Penn Mutual and AWS developed a custom tool to assess workload performance. This helped uncover rightsizing opportunities, reduce VMware Cloud costs, and guide instance selection on Amazon EC2. The team also began migrating applications to Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS), a fully managed container orchestration service, to simplify infrastructure management and improve scalability. For compliance-focused workloads like document storage, Penn Mutual adopted Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP—fully managed shared storage—with write-once-read-many configurations, helping phase out older systems. When a renewal deadline approached for a portion of Penn Mutual’s VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery storage, Penn Mutual and AWS acted quickly to support continuity. This agility kept the project on track and demonstrated the benefits of hands-on AWS collaboration.

To control costs, Penn Mutual used the AWS VMware Migration Accelerator (VMA) program for enhanced security, reliable operations, and significant cost savings, earning credits for each VM migrated. A host retirement strategy was also rolled out and involved shutting down hosts as they became unnecessary.

Using AWS supported broader decisions as well, from deploying Amazon WorkSpaces (secure, flexible, cost-effective virtual desktop services) for secure data access to evaluating data and machine learning tools. These tools include Amazon SageMaker, which delivers an integrated experience for analytics and artificial intelligence; AWS Glue to discover, prepare, and integrate data at any scale; and Amazon EMR, a big data processing service that accelerates analytics workloads. “AWS has continually provided us with access to technology experts to advise on planning and implementing our projects, including multiple issues that were only tangentially related to AWS,” said Michael Oryl, assistant vice president of DevSecOps at Penn Mutual. “Our AWS team offers expertise that gets us to solutions faster—across the board.” This mix of hands-on support and internal implementation made a difference. “We didn’t just migrate workloads; we took the opportunity to modernize them as we went,” said Driscoll. “That flexibility was key to doing this our way, without compromising our standards.”

Penn Mutual made steady progress in its modernization efforts working alongside AWS. By migrating 40–80 VMs per month, the company accelerated its timeline by 25 percent—from a planned migration of 24 months to a new target of 18 months—and stayed ahead of critical licensing deadlines. Full migration is now targeted for early 2026.

Shutting down data centers eliminated hosting and maintenance expenses, while retiring direct connects and shifting to remote work reduced the company’s physical footprint. Smart sequencing of host retirements and participation in the VMA program kept the initiative cost neutral, with AWS credits earned for each VM migrated. This resulted in a savings of tens of thousands of dollars.

The migration also brought greater agility. Automation, internal tooling, and ongoing AWS guidance empowered the Penn Mutual team to work efficiently with limited resources. “Penn Mutual’s migration to AWS helped us remove real estate from our data center and technology equations so we could reduce the firm’s physical footprint and associated costs while improving our scalability and resiliency,” said Driscoll. With containerization and a forward-looking data strategy gaining momentum, Penn Mutual is now better equipped to roll out new tools that support its workforce, financial professionals, and policyholders.