Cloud computing or not – Should you really care?

I was reading a debate between Private and Public cloud computing installations on David Tweedy’s article on Business Insurance . It seems that every vendor is now replacing ‘ASP’ by ‘Cloud’ and jumping on the bandwagon. ( Not that it is completely wrong in every case.) Another interesting aspect is that the public cloud computing infrastructure such as Amazon, SalesForce is enabling relatively smaller vendors to provide a reliable, specialized and cheaper services to their customers.
It is all good, but I have a problem with the marketing hype and jargons surrounding all these offerings. The words like Cloud, SaaS, ASP confuses the hell out of you without realizing the exact benefits of the offered service. Really, should the business care if the hosted service is a perfect ‘Cloud computing’ or not?

I would say - yes, however, rather than going by the word, they should look deep for the meaning of the word. So, what makes a perfect Cloud computing environment for hosted applications? and what does it mean in business terms?

Here are some thoughts -
1) Hosting Model - When you choose a Cloud based application, you should not be worried about Technology infrastructure beneath the application, in fact, and you have no control over it. All you should worry about is the Service levels. This is same as the most of the traditional hosted ASP models.
2) Scalable, reliable Infrastructure - The application should be highly reliable, available 24 X 7 and should perform at the optimum level. In other words, the infrastructure supporting the application should be equipped to support your growing business needs and also those of all your fellow businesses, using the same hosted application.
You should ask your vendors questions to clarify how they are planning to scale their infrastructure, especially when they add more and more customers. A virtualized environment is typically deployed to dynamically scale the infrastructure.
3) Customizability (or in terms of jargon ‘Multi-tenancy) - It should be quicker and inexpensive to implement the customization that you need and it should not degrade the performance. In other words, the application should be built in such a way that the customization is considered in the basic architecture. For example, every time you ask for new variable, the vendor should not add a new table or column in their database. Such a design becomes unwieldy as you add more customizations or vendor adds new customers. A new paradigm of architecture called ‘Multi-tenant’ architecture is often used in Cloud computing environment to address these issues.
4) Security - Your business data should be secure from errors, hackers and disasters. Ask vendors about the database and data structure – whether the data is logically and physically separated, user access control, transportation security, storage security ( encryption mechanism) etc.

So, unless your vendor provides minimum of above 4 points, don’t let them claim their application as ‘Cloud’ based application. In my experience, many vendors do not satisfy 2, 3 and 4. If they are offering hosted service, they tend to call it ‘Cloud’ based service.

- Amit Unde

My Favourite advertisement made it to Time's Top 10

A cute dog worried about its prized possession, insures with Travelers. Very creative ad, and a great music by Ray LaMontagne

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1945379_1944054_1944082,00.html



- Amit Unde

Ignoring Blackberry for your Mobile app - Not a good idea !

I see that many insurance companies are competing to release Consumer facing applications on iPhone, but they are not doing it for Blackberry or any other smart phones. Is it really a good idea?

Contrary to popular beliefs, iPhone does not have the largest market share in Smart phones, but in fact, it is Blackberry (RIM), who is leading the front.

According to latest research released by ComScore, around 36 million Americans use SmartPhones. Out of which 41% market share is with Blackberry and 25% is with Apple. Apple’s growth has been good, but it is not taking it from the Blackberry. Surprising, the Blackberry growth in year 2009 is better than that of Apple.

It will be interesting to look at the age groups. I bet that the Blackberry is being used mostly by business executives, whereas the iPhone is more popular with younger generation.
Question is - What will be the target audience for Insurance companies and which phone they are likely to use?
I would not take any chances and support Blackberry platform as well.

Reference - http://www.fiercedeveloper.com/pages/what-were-top-smartphone-operating-systems-october

- Amit Unde

Oracle in Insurance

By the close of 2009 Oracle had acquired 56 companies--30 of which filled out Oracle's applications portfolio, and 26 of which spruced up its technology lines of business. As Oracle’s marketing team points out 100 of Fortune 100 uses Oracle and in Insurance 20 out of Top 20 uses Oracle Applications.
The strategy has given Oracle broader market leverage with a full stack of Technologies and also the domain specific offerings.

How does it matter to Insurance?

It has been over a year since Oracle created a separate global business unit focusing on the Insurance industry. It has provided some sense of how Oracle wants to integrate the acquired assets and the future direction – at least on the paper. Oracle has a full set of product servicing Insurance, starting from a Policy Admin system, Claims system, Rating, Financial/Billing, CRM, document generation, Data warehousing, Reporting to name a few. It also has a complete set of middleware technologies – thanks to BEA and Sun.
Oracle is already showing results. It has closed many deals with likes of Marsh and Farmers to set the tone for the coming year.

My take – I think, Oracle is serious contender in the Insurance industry. It's industry focus is a BIG PLUS.
It will be of advantage to mid-size insurance companies to be an 'Oracle Shop' and leverage synergies and volume discounts. Also, as Oracle has presence in almost every big organization, it will definitely penetrate more into many of those. I think, it’s time to stop ridiculing the Oracle for their aggressive acquisition strategy and start paying attention to how it can be leveraged.

- Amit Unde

Data Dispensers - Interesting !

Coca-cola has come up with RFID based drink dispensers, which will give consumers choices of more than 100 beverages.. ! It will also allow experimenting by sending new drink formulaes to these machines..
It is not just drink dispenser, but also a data dispenser. It will collect the data of what customers are drinking and transmit it over night to its datawarehouse. The company will get valuable first-hand information on how new drinks are fairing in the market, the regional taste preference and also help managing inventory efficiently.

I loved the concept.I think, it is applicable everywhere - making 'Point of sales' to dispense quality near real-time data will vastly improve the business intelligence. No middlemen, no corruption of data !

Cut your losses !

I have been working with customers to help them modernize their IT systems for few years now. I have seen that customers are more receptive, if we prescribe to build over the existing systems rather than rebuilding from scratch. Though it is comforting to see optimal reuse of existing, practically, sometimes it makes better sense to rewrite than reuse, especially if the current systems are architected in a fashion that will hinder achieving the desired target state for the business. Most often, it is a psychological block that makes it difficult to move away from something that we have cared for a long time. It is like an affinity of share pundit to his or her loosing stock. They buy every time stocks go below and average out its price, but they end up losing everything at the end. It sometimes makes sense to cut your losses and invest somewhere else that is likely to give you most returns.

Success secrets of Portfolio Management

Yesterday, I had an opportunity to talk with divisional CIOs of a large consulting firm about my experiences of implementing portfolio management and CIO dashboards. One question from them kind of intrigued me – What it the success secret of portfolio management? Is it a process, tool or people?
I reflected on my previous experiences and stories that I have heard from my colleagues. Many large organizations put in millions of dollars in setting up Portfolio management tool, only to abandon it later for want of value. Almost in every case, the root cause is – lack of quality data and inability to keep up with changes in the data. Garbage in, Garbage out !
So what could be secret for the success? I think, it is simplicity of the solution. Strive for it without compromising the analysis value. More often, the portfolio management exercise often starts with selection of a tool and implementation of that tool. The tool is often comprehensive and offers to capture a whole lot of data and provides numerous reports. The question one should ask – is it worth the value? The first time, you can capture the data, but can you keep with the changes in the data? IMHO, the first step should be to decide what you must see every day, every quarter and during your annual budget exercise. Keep it as simple as possible. Develop a data capture process, simpler tools and governance process around it. Try to integrate tools to your operational systems so as to keep the data entry minimum. For example, get the operational FTE cost by integrating your tools with timesheet systems. Enhance your process and tools over the period in agile way as you start using it.
After a year or so, once you are confident of the captured data and the process, you may want to look at professional portfolio management tools that can act as your repository. That is solely to keep your future maintenance costs minimum and get in-built integration capabilities. It may appear reversed approach as you will need to migrate data to the tools, but trust me, if you know what you want from tools, often it will be simpler exercise to select, setup and maintain tools. Otherwise, tools are sure to overwhelm you and set you in undesired direction.