The practice of cloud computing in insurance companies

How to solve the long-standing "chimney-type" insurance enterprise computing environment has become the core issue.

Cloud application needs, more is to consider the overall management and economic rationality, through the implementation of fine management, so that the IT environment to green, energy-saving progress.

After the establishment of the insurance enterprise cloud, the business process no longer rigidly adhere to a certain pattern, but the cloud to the processing resources of the unified management and dynamic configuration, the branches of the resource processing are part of the cloud.

At present, cloud computing has become a recognized technology trend, the maturity and popularization of cloud computing will bring great changes to insurance companies from the business to it level. More and more insurance companies have begun to think about how to build their own cloud, the establishment of the insurance company cloud can solve what problems, can bring to the insurance company what benefits? At the same time, the development of insurance companies also face the pressure of cost and number-level business growth, so that insurance companies pay much attention to the utilization of IT resources and scalability of applications.

The computing environment of traditional "chimney-type" insurance enterprises

In order to support the continuous development of business, insurance companies have established various enterprise applications to meet business development needs in different periods. At the same time, in order to ensure the stability of the core application system, the insurance company must maintain the existing "legacy system" continuously, which leads to the long life cycle of its core application system. How to solve the long-standing "chimney-type" insurance enterprise computing environment has become the core problem, it is embodied in the following areas: different infrastructure (hardware) and application infrastructure (middleware) in different application systems, and a new "chimney" for each new application, with long application delivery cycles, It is difficult to meet the requirements of insurance enterprises to quickly respond to the market, insurance enterprises have a variety of system resource utilization is low, can not effectively and fully utilize system resources, infrastructure and application expansion difficulties, long expansion cycle, there is no uniform technical standards, management and operation of high cost.

The landing of cloud computing in insurance companies

The insurance enterprise uses cloud computing to solve the core problem further, the main goal is to continuously enhance IT resources utilization, reduce it cost, enhance the insurance enterprise IT service ability, agile response ability and the support ability to the business, and then create value for the enterprise, promote it construction and management mode to the intensive change. The implementation of cloud computing means that there is a fundamental shift in the architecture, implementation, and operational patterns of the IT environment within the insurance business.

1. The construction and deployment of the insurance enterprise's basic environment in the cloud

In IT infrastructure and environment, cloud computing, by providing "service support" for infrastructure resources, needs to change the way IT operations and builds in the past, transforming network, storage, and server infrastructure resources from a decentralized professional base into a shared resource pool. Insurance companies can be configured and used according to needs. At the same time, with this rapid deployment and operational approach, the business needs can be met in a cost-effective and flexible manner. In the Infrastructure resource deployment mode, the current insurance enterprises are basically distributed or centralized deployment of basic resources, using a multi-center model, its functions mainly include production operations center, the same city or remote disaster preparedness Center. In this mode, when the main center fails, the application needs to be switched to the disaster preparedness Center in a short time, which leads to more waste of the basic environment resources. The cloud concept breaks the traditional pattern and turns the multi-center into a "multi-live Center", Mutual use, mutual backup, will be part of the application of insurance enterprises in the production center, part of the application deployed in the disaster preparedness center, to achieve mutual disaster preparedness between the centers, make full use of resources, and effectively ensure the production and disaster preparedness of the switching ability. Therefore, in the construction of IT infrastructure, we need to change thinking, stand at the height of the enterprise, from the perspective of ensuring business continuity and rapid response to business development, consider the implementation of the basic environmental deployment.

2. High-speed access cloud network

All kinds of services in the cloud need to be acquired over the network, and efficient and reliable networks are particularly important. As far as the current network architecture of most insurance enterprises is concerned, the LAN typically takes a level three deployment architecture, and the WAN adopts the step-by-step extension deployment architecture of the headquarters to the provincial and local locations. If based on the cloud, the network will be a level two architecture, or even a first-tier architecture. Cloud application needs, more is to consider the overall management and economic rationality, through the implementation of fine management, so that the IT environment to green, energy-saving progress.

3. Integrated application architecture for flexible delivery of cloud applications

It is the core of the insurance enterprise to develop and deliver the application system to realize and satisfy the information demand of the business. But the application system construction is often a big problem which the IT manager faces, at any time may produce the problem which the current stage cannot solve. In the construction of information, the insurance companies hope to solve the related problems through a new generation of systems, but in fact, the construction of the next generation system is often to solve the problem, and there are newer problems, but also pay a huge price. For any new generation of core systems, a few years later it will become the old generation. This kind of system transformation, demolished and built, built and demolished, one is longer cycle, the second is the user satisfaction is not high. In the cloud based application architecture, it is no longer limited to the construction of a single system, but more consider the integration of the application system. Through the service component mode, the existing application system can be effectively integrated to realize the rapid and dynamic deployment of cloud application. After the establishment of the insurance enterprise cloud, the business process no longer rigidly adhere to a certain pattern, but the cloud to the processing resources of the unified management and dynamic configuration, the branches of the resource processing are part of the cloud. Through the unified dispatching of the cloud, the load balance of processing resources is realized effectively and the resource utilization is maximized. The goal of the cloud application architecture is to make IT infrastructure more flexible and reusable in order to ultimately achieve business agility, while also bringing strong economic benefits to the insurance business process.

4. Cloud Desktop Delivery

In the past, the management of the insurance enterprise Desktop is decentralized, independent, resulting in difficult to maintain, security is not easy to manage, the expansion of the deployment cycle of business long. After the desktop cloud is established, you can achieve the following advantages: One is centralized deployment, reduce maintenance, improve desktop service level. Through centralized deployment, the insurance enterprise IT staff in the data center can complete all the management and maintenance work, through automated management processes and means, to enhance the desktop operational capacity, including software issued, upgrade patches, security updates and so on. This will not only reduce maintenance workload, but also provide rapid fault handling capabilities, the overall upgrade of the IT staff on the Insurance Enterprise Desktop maintenance support Services level. The second is remote hosting, data isolation, effectively ensuring data security. Desktop Cloud User desktop environment hosted in the Insurance Enterprise Data Center, the local terminal is just a display device. Even if a user saves data in a desktop system, the data is still only in the Insurance Enterprise data Center. The data isolation measures can effectively ensure that the data is not violated and the security of the data is ensured. Third, anytime, anywhere, remote access, providing flexible business capabilities. The desktop cloud provides managed desktops that support the use of a variety of terminal equipment access, while the way the network access to the insurance enterprise users provide a very flexible working ability, as long as there is a network of places, employees can access to the office environment through the network work. This approach provides an insurance company with the ability to move to work, while also providing support for its affiliates or outsourced business teams. With the desktop cloud computing platform, when business expands, it is possible to quickly provide office conditions for branch offices and no longer need to spend a long period of time preparing IT infrastructure. Four is centralized storage, site replication, to build a complete disaster-tolerant system. The desktop cloud uses centralized deployment of all managed desktops, all desktop data are centrally stored in the Insurance Enterprise Data center, can easily achieve data replication between different sites, so that the desktop system into the overall enterprise IT disaster tolerance system, constitute a complete disaster tolerance system. When a disaster occurs, all managed desktops can be quickly restored, ensuring full recovery of business processing power.

5. The interconnection of the Insurance enterprise cloud

At present, the application of cloud computing has been gradually integrated into all areas of society. With the wide application of cloud computing, the Operation management mode, profit model and service mode of insurance enterprises will make great changes, and more and more enterprises will provide various kinds of services in the form of cloud. Therefore, we should actively study how to integrate technology into various business, and put into practice, and continuously protect and serve the people's livelihood. Should be more from the customer experience, the use of integrated services to provide services at the same time to bring more value-added services. At the same time, further establish and complete the relevant laws and regulations and cloud standards to standardize and promote the development of the cloud between insurance enterprises. In the author's opinion, the future of the insurance enterprise Cloud interconnection and form the public service cloud, will become the social development trend.