Based on the fundamental premise that data, information and knowledge are three intricate, indispensable and interdependent elements, hyperscale systems — distributed computing environments that efficiently scale from a few servers to thousands of servers — are being built to unearth untapped business value with unprecedented processing power, speed and accuracy.
CCC Information Services is at the center of this innovation within the insurance industry. We work to help customers convert data from discrete facts into meaningful structures, and ultimately, into domain knowledge. Enterprises seeking to capture a strategic advantage and growth will need to harness the value buried deep inside this domain knowledge, which includes generating metrics, categorizing results, assessing values, making forecasts and predictions, and enabling informed decisions.
The first thing to understand is that today's data is different. We think about it in the context of 3 Vs:
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- Volume
- Variety, and
- Velocity.
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The vast amount of dataset (volume) that are generated now are distributed, diverse, disparate and heterogeneous in nature. They are structured, unstructured and semi- structured (variety). And, these data set are growing at exponential pace (velocity). For example, a single blade in a GE gas or wind turbine, generates 500 gigabytes of data each day. That means in 30 days a single blade would generate as much content as the print collection of the Library of Congress. For the record, there are about 4,500 GE gas turbines around the world, each with dozens of blades. There are examples like this everywhere, including within the P&C insurance industry.
The 3 Vs of the modern data characteristics generate enormous challenges in the areas of storage, retrieval, security, sharing, analysis and reporting. On the flip side, they also open massive business opportunities throughout different phases of data lifecycle. Besides the 3Vs nature of the data we also recognize the density of information embedded in them. That is where true enterprise value lies. Without it any enterprise will be flying blind.
|The new paradigm: Data is liquid, and it's everywhere
The nature of today's hyperscale data has striking similarities with water: precious, abundant resources that are essential to survival. Hyperscale data, like water, is also storable, transportable, transformable, vulnerable and susceptible to contamination when being processed for consumption. And much the same way that massive resources and infrastructures are built to harness the power of water — dams/reservoirs, electric power stations, security and backup systems, purification and filtration systems, distribution channels, maintenance, monitoring systems, billing/accounting/monetization systems — we believe that hyperscale data needs massive storage structures, security systems, high speed networks, processing machines, monitoring and regulatory structure to extract and harness the vast power embedded in them.
|The CCC hyperscale platform
With so much excitement about the potential in the area of hyperscale data, predictive analytics, and deep learning and multilayer neural networks, the insurance industry in many ways is taking the lead in getting real business value from the technology buzz. We are immensely proud to be part of this new technology wave with our partners. We understand that as the hyperscale data business evolves, so does the technology stack, and enterprise application architectures are evolving from integration-centric enterprise service bus (ESB) architectures to application-centric, micro-services, platform-as-a-service (PaaS), multi-cloud, and API-driven architectures.
We understand APIs are the lynchpin to the success for many of our business and technology partners: these APIs are used by applications to access key services and data. These services can be micro-services, cloud workloads, legacy SOAP services, or the Internet of Things (IoT). Using the CCC API foundation layer, we reinforce our technology partnership to create rich insights into how safe drivers are using auto physical damage and injury data, telematics, big data, and analytics. We recognize APIs and API management are essential to scale quickly and can support integration with partner companies' complex infrastructure. In order to process the hyper density data we are building a hyperscale processing platform.
|Dissecting the next generation hyperscale platorm
CCC's hyperscale platform has several important foundational components. They include:
Data ingress/egress layer. Our Ingress/Egress layer has two separate yet equally important goals: Interactivity (real-time queries) and data freshness (real-time ingestion).
This layer has been built to help our clients make sense of large amounts of data in real-time. Every day the platform ingests tens of millions of new events, and currently handles several hundred million aggregated events. The platform has been designed to also support the ability to automatically and efficiently move large amounts of data in and out of platform; and to parallelize the execution, across multiple execution nodes in the application framework layer.
Data as a Service (DAAS) layer. Our DAAS layer is built on the fundamental guiding principle that underlying raw business data will be very fluid — structured, unstructured, and semi-structured — and stored in diverse data storage types at a it's a volume with an exponential pace. Treating DAAS and not a dependency layer, large scale applications can be built to be data storage, structure and location agnostic. By insulating the applications from the above three concerns that hamstrung application portability and scaling for several decades, DAAS enables the business logic to become highly portable across diverse applications platforms. Being location-agnostic enables applications to be highly available across different geographic regions as DAAS can be made available 24×7. Our DAAS layer has been built to address concerns on the both application level features and operational area, including application latency; linear scalability; high availability; and operational economics.
Application framework layer. The hyperscale application layer has been designed to support an array of diverse applications that can access data stored in the DAAS layer in a storage-, structure-, and location-agnostic way. It supports high velocity data streaming apps, high volume transactional and batch type apps. Petabytes scale business intelligence and predictive analytical apps, and multilayer neural network — (deep learning apps).
Hyperscale data security. Lastly, with big data comes big responsibility; its security. A multilayered data security strategy — prevention, detection and policy/administration — can be both efficient and effective at maximizing security controls.
Preventive controls stop intruders from gaining unauthorized access to data. Detective controls centralize auditing and reporting across the organization so that either security breach or compromised system can be swiftly detected and necessary actions be taken. And finally, policies/administrative controls can prevent unlimited and ad-hoc access to application data while still allowing legitimate administrative activity.
CCC's hyperscale data security layer has been implemented as a three-pronged approach: two level identification data encryption, and data de-identification.
|The road ahead
Hyperscale data is still in its infancy and evolving. Its potential is immense, but so are its challenges. We at CCC are working on next generation initiatives to address the huge challenges our partners face and deliver solutions that are unique to their business.
Dr. Reza Rooholamini is vice president of Architecture and Technology at CCC Information Services Inc. For questions, or to learn more, send email to [email protected].
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