Overcoming cloud adoption challenges
Here's how a single, unified cloud platform can deliver the global access, speed, security, and compliance you need.
The global insurance industry is changing. New challenges are emerging, but with fresh challenges come opportunities. A widescale digital transformation, driven by shifting customer need and expectation, has been steadily eroding legacy systems and disparate platforms.
Cloud adoption is ubiquitous, but for some organizations, the obstacles seem insurmountable and the expected benefits have not yet materialized.
Realizing the potential of a unified cloud platform requires the right strategy, and crafting the right strategy begins with an examination of the problems you need to solve.
Why embrace the cloud?
The traditional model of infrastructure hosting when it comes to data management is to have at least a couple of data warehouses that you set up, staff and maintain. For a global company, the location of these data warehouses is vital, because it’s going to have an impact on how quickly your customers and your employees around the world can access the information they need. The latency between a data warehouse in the states and a call center in South Africa, for example, can quickly become problematic and potentially even cost you business.
Many companies set up data warehouses in various locations. But a wave of new legislation over the last few years, designed to safeguard personal data, stipulates that sensitive data must be stored in the same country as the customer. The shifting sands of compliance have forced a lot of changes in the way that data must be stored and the way it can be accessed.
There are also data retention laws to consider.
Companies are also embracing decentralized data strategies and technologies which eliminate the need for investment in large data warehouses and their management overhead. Data is evolving rapidly, as is the effectiveness of businesses in being able to analyze and make use of that data. What is critical today will likely change tomorrow. A decentralized data approach leveraging today’s cloud technologies allows organizations to rapidly and cost-effectively create new datasets. These can then easily be pulled through to advanced business intelligence (BI) visualization tools for tactical analysis that’s relevant for that moment in time. Data that is no longer required for dashboards and analytical purposes can be stored more cost-effectively in cold storage locations.
Many businesses are legally obliged to keep data for years. It’s vital to build in some redundancy, but even with two servers in separate locations, there’s a risk they could go down at the same time, effectively taking your business with them.
Security isn’t just about having solid backups; you also need to take proactive measures to prevent the wrong people from gaining access. You need a sophisticated system of user accounts that restricts access to data on a need basis. Keeping up to date with the latest developments in cybersecurity and administering data warehouses that must serve global locations is a big job for a small IT contingent.
How often do you run a security audit? And how quickly can you remediate when problems are uncovered? All these considerations come before we even mention the tricky issue of scaling. Having to physically build out more infrastructure to scale up is expensive and time-consuming, and lacking the flexibility to reduce your overhead in difficult times can be catastrophic.
Adopting the cloud has the potential to address every one of these issues, but it requires careful consideration and planning.
Obstacles to success
Before making a move, it’s vital to map out your expectations and define what you want to use the cloud for. Once you have a clear picture of what data will go into the cloud and how you’re going to migrate it, you can assess the project and see if you have the necessary resources and skillsets to successfully complete it. Crafting a roadmap that guides you beyond the quick wins to your ultimate goal will help to keep you focused and increase your chances of success.
There’s no doubt cloud adoption will require new processes to be put in place, it will require different skills that your current IT department may lack, and it will require a culture change within your business.
Buy-in from all your different departments is vital. Since it can’t be done overnight, and you want to minimize disruption to the normal running of your business, you’ll need a hybrid strategy that works with a phased migration.
Making the right choices
With a strategy in mind, it’s time to start making the hard choices, such as which platform to go for. There are lots of options out there beyond the big two, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, but the industry leaders also bring a certain confidence and recognition that may impact on your customers. Assess your options based on the criteria you established at the outset and verify that they can deliver on all your requirements.
Think about swift access for global customers and employees, account control and security standards, and redundancy and disaster recovery. Don’t forget to ensure that compliance is part of the package. Drill into the service level agreements and make sure that your business is going to be well catered for in terms of support and future scalability.
Reaping the rewards
Once your migration is complete, those problems we discussed at the outset are but a memory. You have a secure global network that’s instantly accessible for your employees and customers. It is up to date with the very latest cybersecurity standards and compliance requirements, including data location and redundancy. Perhaps best of all, you can now spin up new environments within days, with no need to buy in and set up new hardware.
Speaking from our own experience with building a private cloud-based application for our partners and insurers to access and collaborate globally, pursuing a unified platform for your business based on modern cloud infrastructure can serve your customers better, increase your agility, and cut away the traditional barriers to innovation. Not only can you provide existing services more efficiently but opening new lines of business becomes faster and easier than ever before.
Pete Douglas (Pete.Douglas@innovation.group) is COO, and Mike Hinton is global chief technology officer for Innovation Group North America, which provides comprehensive operational support and a range of expert services to the world’s leading insurers, brokers, fleet managers and automotive manufacturers. Opinions expressed here are the authors’ own.
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