He Dong, deputy general manager of the software development center of Chinese Minmin Property & Casualty Insurance Co., Ltd
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > the informatization process of PICC Property & Casualty Insurance</h1>
As an insurance enterprise of the same age as the Republic, Chinese People's Insurance has been adhering to the purpose of "people's insurance, serving the people" for more than 70 years, taking the initiative to assume social responsibility and providing high-quality insurance services.
Over the past 20 years, with the sustained and rapid development of business and the transformation and upgrading of business models, the core system of PICC P&C insurance has also been continuously upgraded and evolved, and its development process has roughly gone through three key stages: the first stage is the single application construction stage of the great unification; the second stage is the platform construction stage of independent construction according to business fields and public capabilities based on the purpose of capacity reuse; and the third stage is the mobile construction stage of mobile Internet business model.
In recent years, with the comprehensive and in-depth application of new technologies such as mobile Internet, blockchain, big data and artificial intelligence, as well as the emergence of new business models, the insurance industry is undergoing great changes, which has put forward new challenges to the IT capabilities of insurance companies. Especially in the business peaks such as "Double Eleven" and "Double Twelve", as well as nodes where business policies have undergone major changes, such as commercial vehicle fee reform and "newspaper and bank integration", the traditional centralized architecture has problems such as poor expansion ability and cannot automatically expand elastically, which is difficult to deal with when facing these scenarios. Insurance enterprise IT architectures require greater elastic scalability, and distributed microservices architectures are the best choice.
In 2018, Chinese Insurance proposed the "3411" project to transform to high-quality development. In this context, Chinese insurance launched the research work on the new architecture of the information system, unified planning and construction at the group level, unified technical standards, optimized the R&D operation system, and realized the reuse of the group's business support capabilities.
Based on the above background and objectives, PICC P&C officially started the transformation of distributed microservice architecture, released the PDF-C distributed microservice technology system and PICC cloud in August 2019, built and launched the core system of distributed architecture, and realized the fully distributed and cloud service of the core system.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > the practice and effectiveness of distributed architecture</h1>
1. Overall design ideas. Most distributed architectures use redundancy or module splitting to make services and applications more scalable and highly available. The AKF Extended Cube model (see Figure 1) is a classic methodology for the scalability design of distributed architectures that can guide us through the capacity building of distributed architectures.
Figure 1 AKF extended cube model
The AKF model contains three dimensions of the XYZ axis. Among them, the X axis represents the service carrying capacity of the application and database by cloning the application and database instances; the Y axis means that the domain model is established by dividing the business function boundaries, splitting the application and designing microservices, and the service reuse and scaling ability is improved; the Z axis means that the data set is split into multiple data subsets or business units through the data sharding strategy to improve the data scalability capability. The three dimensions cover many different areas of business and technology, and together they can achieve unlimited expansion of distributed application capabilities.
PICC P&C co-designed from both business and technical aspects to enhance the ability of the XYZ axis of the AKF model.
In terms of business, with reference to business process and functional boundaries, we divide business domain boundaries, build domain models, and split and design microservices based on the principle of unity of responsibility. The strategy of partition and governance is adopted to reduce the complexity of business analysis and application construction, and improve the Y-axis service expansion capability of the AKF model.
In terms of technology, in multiple technical fields such as infrastructure and technical architecture, we will improve the expansion capability of the XZ axis of the AKF model by improving the automation O&M, high availability and service carrying capacity.
The first is to establish a human insurance cloud platform based on cloud-native technology, complete the cloud servitization of the basic resources of the IaaS layer and the technical component resources of the PaaS layer, realize the unified management, rapid expansion, unified scheduling and automatic allocation of the basic resources, and support the elastic expansion, rapid deployment and stable operation of applications and databases.
The second is to establish a distributed architecture technology system, using front-end and back-end separation design and microservice architecture, so that applications have the ability to go to the cloud, automatically expand and shrink based on PICC cloud, and improve application scalability. The data sharding strategy and unit design are adopted to improve the scalability of data and business units, improve the business carrying capacity of data centers, and establish the ability of multi-center and multi-activity from the enterprise as a whole to achieve high availability of applications.
2. Business modeling and microservice design. Single application splitting and microservice design is a difficult point in the design of distributed architectures. We need to ensure that microservices have clear boundaries and support the evolution of microservices architectures. When designing microservices, we first start from the business perspective, first complete the business domain boundary demarcation and domain modeling, then take the domain model as the input of the microservice design, and finally split the monolithic application into microservices with clear boundaries, "high cohesion, low coupling", single business responsibilities, and easy evolution. Through the divide and conquer strategy, the fragmentation is broken, breaking the traditional system concept.
When building the domain model, we consider the enterprise-level reuse of business capabilities, distinguish between common capabilities (such as customers, users, etc.) and core capabilities (such as underwriting, claims, etc.), and consider the collaborative design of front, middle and back office as a whole.
The first is to abstract and precipitate general business capabilities, such as tool platforms, public business modules and other capabilities, establish a standard general capability field model, and realize the enterprise-level reuse of general capabilities.
The second is to build a core business domain model that can meet the requirements of the reuse of core business capabilities in different channels, unify the mobile Internet and traditional core domain models, and avoid the repeated construction of core business capabilities.
The third is to consider the synergy of the front desk, middle office and back office as a whole, realize the reuse of front-end pages, processes and services for different channel applications, realize the connection of core business links of different business sectors, realize the integration of front-end business processes and enterprise-level data, and support front-line business and business model innovation.
After splitting the monolithic application into microservices, we can form project teams according to the Principles of TwoPizzaTeam Team Building and better implement agile development. In addition, the microservice deployment package is relatively small, which can better go to the cloud, realize the elastic scaling of applications, improve the automation operation and maintenance capabilities, and better manage and utilize resources.
3. Construction of distributed architecture technology system. When microservices are landed, many technical components are needed to support them, and these components in different technical fields constitute the distributed architecture technology system of PICC Property & Casualty Insurance. After nearly four years of technology accumulation and practice, we have completed the research and construction of the independent and controllable new generation of distributed microservice technology system PDF-C (PICC Development Framework for Cloud), which can support the landing of microservices upwards and adapt to the human insurance cloud downwards, effectively responding to high-frequency massive service access scenarios.
The PDF-C technology system covers the whole life cycle of software development such as development, testing, operation and maintenance, and realizes the platformization and standardization of various technical components. Specifically, it includes front-end development frameworks, microservices development frameworks, microservices governance components, distributed databases, and technical components related to data processing such as replication and synchronization under distributed architectures (see Figure 2).
Figure 2 PDF-C technical system
In the selection of technology, we focus on the ability of technology components to match the insurance business scenario. For example, when choosing a distributed database, we focus on the linear scalability of data, data sharding, and support for multi-center and multi-activity; for high-frequency access business scenarios, we introduce technical components such as distributed caching and search engines; and for large-scale data replication and asynchronous operations under the microservices architecture, we introduce technical components such as data replication and message queuing. In short, mature technical components should be selected as much as possible to ensure the high performance and stability of the service.
The PDF-C distributed architecture technology system fully supports the R&D and operation of PICC P&C's core business system, which can quickly build front, middle and back office business logic, support automatic elastic scaling of applications, and support high concurrent Internet access. All applications based on the new architecture are deployed on the x86 server, which can complete the down-of-the-board movement, fully support independent innovation, and at the same time improve the IT technology capabilities and integration level of PICC Property & Casualty Insurance, reduce the difference in technology stack and the difficulty of system integration, and effectively support the integrated operation of the group.
4. Evolutionary strategy of monolithic applications to microservices. After the domain modeling of the monolithic application is completed, the new functions and some business capabilities can be independently created according to the boundary of the domain model, in addition to the monolithic application, and the new functions and some business capabilities can be built independently.
As you evolve from a monolithic application to a microservices architecture, the new microservices run side-by-side with the monolithic application. The new microservices maintain a loose coupling relationship with the monolithic application, and the two are only business-related through services or asynchronous data. Over time, most monolithic applications become independent of their functionality as microservices. By gradually stripping the business capabilities of the monolithic application, the microservice is finally completed to replace the original monolithic application.
5. Transformation of R&D operation model. Faced with the application scenarios that need to support large-scale microservices and deployment units under the distributed architecture, we have launched the transformation of the R&D-Operations Integration (DevOps) model at the same time as the architecture transformation. Through the combination of organizational collaboration, process optimization and tool platform, the software requirements, development, testing, deployment, operation and maintenance and operation related processes are unified, and the organizational collaboration optimization is carried out based on the entire R&D operation team, so as to realize the seamless integration of project management, development and testing, continuous delivery and application operation, and quickly deliver high-quality software and services.
First, in terms of personnel protection, it is organized at two levels, the first level is controlled by the technical manager, acceptance tester, and operation and maintenance personnel as a whole to control the requirements, progress and deployment, and the second level sets up a number of development and test teams under the project team to implement development and test tasks.
The second is to form two closed loops in terms of process standards, one is the closed loop of demand, development, testing, deployment, operation and maintenance to ensure the whole life cycle management of iterative tasks; the other is the closed loop of implementation, inspection, feedback and correction within each process to ensure the implementation effect of phased tasks.
The third is to achieve integrated links in the use of tools, link all aspects of development, testing, and deployment through pipelines, and adapt to support various process changes through platform construction.
DevOps has been implemented and promoted by more than 40 distributed project teams, involving about 200 microservices, establishing about 1,500 pipelines, and performing nearly 100,000 pipelines, realizing minute-level online upgrades and supporting urgent needs to be launched on the same day. The system has passed the level 3 evaluation of the "R&D Operation Integration (DevOps) Capability Maturity Model Part 3: Continuous Delivery" of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, reaching the leading level in China.
6. Empower the business. PICC P&C officially released the PDF-C distributed architecture technical standard in 2019, completed the launch of the distributed core version 1.2, and comprehensively improved the business support capabilities and user experience, with the following main results.
First, through business modeling and middle-stage design, enterprise-level business capabilities are reused. Through the integration and reconstruction of the functions of the traditional monolithic system, a series of shareable middle office components are formed, which realizes the flexible combination, sharing, and unification of business logic and data of the application. Taking the launch of insurance products as an example, based on the product center and the underwriting middle platform, the configuration of insurance products is realized, and business personnel can directly define and configure product elements, billing interfaces and business rules, and publish them to various channels such as outlet counters, official websites, and mobile terminals with one click. Traditional insurance products typically take several weeks to go live, but in a distributed architecture, they can be shortened to the hour, and ensure that the rules of each billing interface are completely consistent.
Second, through the application of distributed technology, the service carrying capacity and processing efficiency are greatly improved. After the distributed core is launched, the efficiency of data access and query has been significantly improved, and the integrated application and real-time query of national data have been realized. Taking the call center scenario as an example, in the distributed core system, the customer service agent can query the national insurance policy data, and the query time of the insurance policy and case is shortened from 2 seconds to about 200 milliseconds in the traditional architecture, which greatly improves the service efficiency.
The third is to reshape the process for business scenarios and upgrade the user experience. Through the model of separating the front and middle offices, PICC Property & Casualty has comprehensively reconstructed the front desk, broken the functional boundaries of the traditional monolithic system, and built a series of portals from the role and business scenarios to ensure that each user gets the functional experience of "one login, overall control", which greatly improves the operation experience and processing efficiency. Taking salespeople as an example, through the unified sales portal, you can obtain the functional support of the whole scenario and complete the business operations that were originally scattered in different systems such as sales, underwriting, and claims.
The fourth is to establish a multi-center multi-activity capability of one-click switching in different places to support the on-demand delivery of resources. PICC Cloud has built a cloud data center environment with dual-active data center in the north and south, and the north and south centers provide services to the outside world at the same time, and the business data is synchronized in both directions in real time, realizing 2,000 kilometers of off-site dual-active. When the data center fails, it can complete the multi-activity switchover with one click, and realize the second-level remote service takeover, which greatly ensures the continuity of business operations. Through the cloud management platform, the delivery of cloud host resources takes only about 3 minutes.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > thinking and outlook</h1>
The complexity of distributed architecture construction is far beyond the traditional digital construction, and enterprises need to invest a lot of manpower and material resources to comprehensively improve the capabilities of all aspects. Digital transformation is inseparable from talent training, technology accumulation, organizational structure capacity building and other content, but also needs to be guided by a unified methodology, coordinated and orderly development, so that the team can operate efficiently. These capabilities cannot be built overnight, and the process will be more complicated and lengthy. Enterprises can set long-term goals, first find the root and entry point to solve the problem, start from improving the basic technical capabilities, and then solve the problems of business model unification and organizational capacity building one by one, and iteratively evolve and steadily advance in stages and steps.
Enterprise digital transformation is easier said than done! Under the guidance of the "3411" project of Chinese Insurance, we will not forget our original intention, continue to deepen digital transformation, strengthen scientific and technological empowerment, and write a new chapter in the digital transformation of PICC Property & Casualty Insurance!