Digital Insurance by Bernardo Nicoletti

Author:Bernardo Nicoletti
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781137553287
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2016-10-17T16:00:00+00:00

Table 4.4 Examples of financial services using cloud solutions

Perspectives on cloud computing

The promise of cloud computing is very attractive: it is flexible and adapts well to the needs of the organizations. Organizations pay for what they consume. The cloud allows fixed costs to be transformed into variable costs. It eliminates large investments, replacing them with operating costs over time. Finally, it can make the ICT infrastructure redundant and fault tolerant. The model is particularly suitable in the contexts in which computing needs are discontinuous in time. In these cases, cloud computing resources are exploited to the maximum while internal ICT resources might not always be fully utilized. Cloud computing is very interesting for start-ups that can focus on the business elements and neglect most of the structural and economic aspects related to the technological ICT infrastructure.

Other important elements to consider include the portability of the applications developed in the cloud, the level of service provided (service level agreement – SLA), the backup, and the restoring of the applications, as well as the legal regulations in cases of disputes.

Cloud computing for insurance companies and start-ups

The cloud is being widely adopted for applications that are important to business success, according to a study by Forrester Research conducted on behalf of Infosys, a provider of consulting and outsourcing services60.

A majority of the 300 organizations in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Australia, surveyed by Forrester in July and August 2014 (81 percent), said they are either using or planning to use critical applications in the cloud in the following two years.

The survey found that cost savings are no longer the primary drivers for leveraging cloud services, with 77 percent of organizations considering agility to be the key driver.

Other highlights of the study are that 77 percent of respondents are either using or planning to use infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), or software as a service (SaaS) for a range of business applications within two years from the date of the survey. 66 percent agree that they should prioritize the development of a comprehensive cloud strategy for their digital resources.

In addition, 70 percent of businesses want to work with a cloud implementation vendor that offers a single point of accountability, and 66 percent are either concerned or very concerned about the complexity involved in managing and governing a hybrid cloud environment.

Unified content management

People often talk about unified communications in referring to the use of a single tool (be it a computer or an electronic appliance) for all possible modes of communication: voice, data, e-mail, video, and so on. It is a concept that is interesting for the possibility of not only reducing the number of devices that are used (phone, tablet, PDA, computer, and so on) but also centralizing in a single device (and in one software) all communications. In this situation, there would not be the need to move from one device to another in order to communicate.

From the point of view of the organization, this also means focusing more and more on a unified management of all possible content.

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