Case Study: Helvetia achieves data centre consolidation and 80% network automation with Arista Networks

Helvetia - Customer Case Study

Helvetia, a Swiss-based insurance group serving over 5 million customers, completed a 2015 merger that left it operating five data centres, 1,600 servers and 300+ applications. The company seized the consolidation project as an opportunity to reduce operational complexity and increase automation by moving to a software‑defined networking approach centered on VMware NSX.

Helvetia chose Arista (7050/7150/7280 switches and EOS) with Arista’s DCI/VXLAN capability to provide layer‑2 connectivity across two target data centres. Over a planned five‑weekend migration span (six months), the team moved roughly 95% of infrastructure with no unplanned outages; the deployment consolidated five sites to two, virtualized about 80% of manual network tasks, sped up VLAN and service delivery, and simplified ongoing operations.

Helvetia

Andreas Hagin

Lead Engineer, IT Infrastructure