Insurance-Canada.ca - Where Insurance & Technology Meet

CIOs: Death in the Clouds?

Predictions are that Cloud Computing might be the roadmap to the future, but a recent posting on the Celent blog suggests that it might be a dead end street for some professions.

Many of us have heard rumours of the demise of the technical CIO in insurance organizations for years. The argument goes that given the rapid change in technology insurance organizations would do better to look to acquire technical skills and capabilities through out-sourcing and technical partnering than to have these in house. And yet, the authority and scope of CIOs and CTOs seem to be rising in many organization.

Celent’s Catherine Stagg-Macey suggests that Cloud Computing may be the tipping point, citing two case studies, one involving the UK Royal Mail which moved from an internal email system for 37,000 users, to an external cloud. The second, which touches closer to the insurance home, is a UK insurer which is testing a cloud-based policy administration system.

There are many hurdles to face, with security, and reliability, but there does seem to be a path towards commoditization of technology functionality generally, and insurance applications specifically.

The 2011 Insurance-Canada.ca Technology Conference will have several sessions on Cloud Computing. And for those nerovous types, it is also a great networking opportunity.