Any business needs to focus on what’s core to it, like nurturing customer relationships or coding. But for a business to run smoothly, several other things have to be taken care of. One of these things is the IT infrastructure.
It is one of the most important and expensive affairs for any business, especially for a small or medium-sized. Only some big organizations have the budget and capability to set up and maintain their own dedicated IT infrastructure. Others do not have that luxury.
This is where cloud computing as a service comes into the picture.
It is a service that is provided by a second party so that you can focus on what’s core to your business. Some “as-a-service” cloud computing options include Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS).
Out of these, PaaS stands out in terms of flexibility and ease of operation. It provides resources that enable you to deliver everything from simple cloud-based apps to huge, cloud-enabled enterprise applications.
It is widely adopted by call centers, data-centric organizations, and insurance companies.
Some of the popular PaaS examples include AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Windows Azure, Heroku, Force.com, Google App Engine, Apache Stratos, and OpenShift.
PaaS is a step ahead of the basic cloud service offering viz. IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) in the sense that it takes care of the underlying infrastructure so that the business can focus on what’s more important to it and on delivering value to its end users.
An Introduction to PaaS
Platform as a service (PaaS) is a complete cloud environment with resources and infrastructure that enable you to deploy your applications over the cloud. The cloud service provider provides the needful resources on a pay-as-you-go basis. These resources are easily accessible over a secure internet connection.
If you’re looking to avoid the expense and complexity of buying and managing software licenses and maintaining your IT infrastructure, PaaS is just the service you’re looking for.
Main Scenarios Where Organizations Use PaaS
1. Development Framework
PaaS provides a framework for developers to develop or customize cloud-based applications. Similar to creating Excel macros, the service allows them to create applications using built-in software components, cloud features, tools, templates, and code libraries.
The result? Rapid prototyping and reduced amount of coding for developers.
It does so by providing prebuilt backend infrastructure and other resources.
2. Analytics or Business Intelligence
Tools and libraries included with PaaS allow organizations to analyze and mine their data, find meaningful insights, and make future predictions.
This helps make forecasting more accurate and also helps in several business decisions related to product designs and investment returns, among others.
3. Trends in P&C (Property & Casualty) Insurance
The trends surrounding P&C Insurance are evolving rapidly today. There is an incredible focus on reducing the premium costs. With the kind of competition that’s growing, it has become inevitable for new products to be developed and delivered to customers.
Surprisingly enough, large players are being threatened by comparatively newer, local players in this sector.
For the former to stay relevant in the current insurance landscape, they must adopt digital ways of doing business. A total digital transformation is what they need to go through currently. One of the most important parts of this transformation journey is IT infrastructure procurement.
This is where cloud computing takes the entry. Insurers are seeing significant benefits from using the cloud over traditional infrastructures in terms of speed, flexibility, capacity, cost, and ROI.
The number of insurers using cloud computing has tripled in the last two to three years, according to new research from Novarica, from less than 20% to more than 70%.
PaaS adoption in P&C Insurance
There are lots of compliance and regulatory requirements in the Insurance sector. Meeting these requirements is one of the most common challenges of adopting cloud in this sector. It was so much easier to meet those requirements with on-premises data solutions since the enterprise had complete control over access to its software and data center.
The nature of the public cloud is such that it doesn’t make it very easy for P&C insurers to adhere to these compliance and regulatory requirements.
As a result, the insurers are opting for setting up private clouds within their network with the infrastructure capacity provided in-house.
PaaS platforms enable them to not only build a regulatory-compliant cloud infrastructure that is industry-standard but also adopt modern computing methodologies to meet business objectives, reduce infrastructure maintenance costs, avoid vendor lock-ins, and align with a multi-cloud strategy.
Making the Right Selection: Factors to Consider
Are you ready to deploy a PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) option for your application developers?
Here are a few factors that can help you make the right choice and ensure that the new platform lives up to expectations.
- Automation levels do not make the mistake of assuming that all PaaS deployment options would contain the same amount of automation functionality. This is important to consider, especially if you’re expecting to use PaaS for its potential to enable you to deliver platform elements independently, in a self-service style. Always remember that the range of processes that can be automated varies.
- Custom coding not all PaaS solutions allow all elements to be customized. That said, the ability of PaaS to improve a developer’s productivity, and enable rapid development with faster delivery of functionality is worth all the little drawbacks that it has. Different PaaS platform options provide varying amounts of elements that can be personalized and ways in which changes are requested and enacted. Some projects call for customized stack setups. An experienced PaaS provider like Jellyfish Technologies can help such organizations select the best PaaS option that suits their needs.
- Support structureSimilar to personalization, some PaaS providers offer more comprehensive customer service than others. Figure out your mission-critical projects and the level of developer support you require. It could certainly differ from project to project.
To Sum up
The future of P&C insurance is driven by innovation. Property and casualty insurers face ever-changing challenges, risks, and opportunities.
Adopting the PaaS platforms would help P&C insurers speed up their digital modernization journey.
However, before choosing a PaaS platform, it is important to consider the nature of your data sources, security patterns across your enterprise, associated costs, and integration with on-premises applications.
