It added, “With Oracle Insurance products, insurers can get products to market faster, reduce operational costs, strengthen customer and distributor relationships, and gain full visibility into their business operations.”

The move puts another worldwide technology giant into the insurance space, along with Microsoft and IBM.

“The story is our focus on insurance,” said Chuck Johnston, vice president, Strategy and Alliances, for Oracle Insurance. “We bought two of the major up-and-coming players in the market space. With the combination of our AdminServer and Skywire assets, we now have over 2,000 customers globally.”

According to the company, “Oracle Insurance leverages a broad standards-based product set that spans Oracle Database, Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Enterprise Performance Management applications (EPM).”

Mr. Johnston described what Oracle sees as a three-tier strategy for the insurance marketplace. The first tier involves offering a “best of breed” product line that touches many areas, including policy administration, document automation and rating.

The second tier is an integration strategy that involves the company's own products, as well as those of other vendors, he noted. “Oracle is a software company. Our focus is to have software that works out of the box, although you may have to configure and write rules.

“The new AIA is our strategy to connect our stuff to our stuff and our stuff to other stuff,” he continued. He emphasized that the AIA foundation is being laid as a global strategy across many industries. In insurance, the first “connection pack” will link the company's claims products to its financial solution.

“This is a real-time solution that allows users to manage cash flows on a daily basis,” he added. “More new connectors for insurance are to be announced.”

Mr. Johnston said the connectors are not exclusive to Oracle products but also provide tools that allow users to connect to other software.

The third tier specified by Mr. Johnston is the “insurance company in a box” concept, which represents an end-to-end offering that will encompass CRM, product development, marketing, policy administration, billing, back office functions and more.

“We could deploy an insurance company today,” he asserted, although he declined to comment on the associated costs. “We expect most of our customers to buy pieces of the solutions, but they have a guarantee that in three years they can connect new modules to what they buy now. You really can buy modules; you don't have to buy a more complicated product and shut off 80 percent of it.”

Why has Oracle been making such an aggressive move into insurance? “Oracle already has a lot of insurance customers,” said Mr. Johnston. “We needed to add focus. In fact, our customers have come to us and asked us to do this.”

Commenting on the timing of the announcement, Mr. Johnston observed that, “The market seems primed for serious solutions with real backing. Given what's happening in the rest of the financial markets, this is a good time to focus on insurance.

“The insurance industry operates differently than the rest of the financial space,” he continued. “Insurers have taken some hits from financial portfolios, but insurance is one of the soundest pieces of the financial marketplace in general.”

He added that the new architecture is applicable for both the property-casualty and life insurance sectors. “We can do a full deployment in either marketplace,” he stated. “This is not vaporware. We're here to stay. Oracle has made a large investment in insurance, companies, people and ongoing development.”