Are Insurers Woke to the Cloud?

Sometimes I hear folks say things like, “The insurance industry is so risk-averse,” but I don’t really see it that way.  The insurance industry literally makes its living by monetizing risk, so to say it has a strong dislike for risk is like saying it doesn’t like money.

The reason that insurance has lagged behind other industries in the drive toward digital is not due to an aversion to risk, but rather it hasn’t had the catalyst it needs. Inertia is a powerful force, and the insurance industry has been something of an inert industry in terms of real technological advancements.

The emergence of many InsurTech startups that focus on the customer experience first has really provided the catalyst needed to get the ball rolling in insurance. That said, the jury is still out on whether digital transformation for insurance carriers will be a Herculean push uphill or a fast ride downhill. In some cases, that’s where the cloud has the greatest opportunity to play its role.

Legacy Data-Architecture Nightmares

Insurance carriers are large and typically complex organizations that are often built over many years via a combination of organic and inorganic means. New products, built years after their predecessors, often utilize different technologies than previous products.  Products added via mergers and acquisitions also come with their own designs and infrastructures.  These infrastructures are often stitched together to create the look of an integrated company, when under the hood, the combined infrastructure would wake you up in a cold sweat. This makes it difficult for innovation to find its place in the IT plan.

For organizations with on-premise infrastructures, the desire to innovate may require new hardware. This can slow an organization down as they need to approve, purchase, receive and install the new hardware before pushing forward.  This also slows the pace of innovation and often has people shifting priorities while waiting—sometimes resulting in people never really moving.

Waking Your Data Up in the Cloud

For organizations that are already fully or partially in the cloud, the challenge can be garnering the resources internally to stand up new instances to support innovations.  However, in some organizations, it’s TOO easy to get new cloud infrastructure set up, and cloud sprawl eliminates most of the cost benefits associated with being in the cloud.  It’s like Oprah:  “You get a cloud!  You get a cloud!  EVERYBODY gets a cloud!”  And before you know it, you’re spending more in the cloud than you ever did on-premise.

The MarkLogic^® Data Hub Service (DHS) removes all of the obstacles insurers face when trying to innovate.  DHS is a fully automated, managed cloud service that can be created in about 15 minutes and has the most business-friendly pricing methodology ever created.  So you don’t have to wait for hardware, you don’t have to wait for your cloud infrastructure team to set up an instance for your project and you don’t have to worry about data sprawl impacting your cloud footprint.

With DHS, not only has MarkLogic simplified data integration, but it has also simplified digital transformation.

Visit the MarkLogic Data Hub Service page to find out how it enables organizations to transform enterprise data management in the cloud.