Customers prefer simplicity speed and transparency, from quote to claim, and the adoption of multi-cloud as a strategic initiative fosters growth and innovation. It encourages collaboration among employees and improves accessibility to customer data, leading to the creation of a more holistic, personalized and relationship-building approach to customer interactions.
Rise of Hyper-Personalized Cloud Solutions
Cloud vendors are leveraging the concept of verticalization, which incorporates offering hyper-personalized cloud solutions to customers. The cloud vendors offer customized solutions with data models, core systems and horizontal applications tailored for insurtech businesses, bringing more flexibility into their cloud environment.
See also: Benefits of Deploying a Hybrid Cloud
Multi-cloud Chaos: A Reality
However, insurtechs can wind up with a complex, multi-cloud architecture using different proprietary interfaces, platforms and services. Many insurtechs are not able to fully leverage the benefits of their exhaustive cloud investments, and expenses can soar.
There needs to be a strategy to tame the chaos. Some insurtechs are showing deep interest in leveraging the concept of sky computing, also known as supercloud or meta cloud.
How Meta Cloud Can Help
The super or meta cloud provides a single pane of glass for managing and provisioning resources catering to multi-cloud environments under a layer of abstraction. It provides a centralized manner to manage security compliances, costs,and data security with precision.
Let’s take a rundown on optimizing meta cloud for taming a diverse cloud architecture for insurtech businesses.
1. Bringing More Operational Visibility Into the Processes: Meta cloud brings a cohesive view of all the cloud resources used by insurtechs, the process and current activities involving end-to-end operations. A centralized, call-level interface popularly termed CLI can be leveraged to optimize the process of sharing user access to shared resources, and all this can be done simply from the compatibility layer. This interface operates as a centralized command center that offers complete visibility and control to developers over the cloud service providers’ different platforms and services using standardized application programming interfaces (APIs).
This approach has numerous benefits for effective management and maintenance of all the cloud resources. By using the benefits of automated processes for provisioning, cost optimization and scaling processes, time savings can be obtained, particularly on the tasks that are critical for streamlined operations. Therefore, cloud service automation helps to enhance flexibility and improve the capability to onboard partners smoothly. With minimized maintenance costs, it becomes easy to integrate new solutions into existing cloud architectures without making expansive modifications, leading to a simpler approach to enhancing capabilities. Additionally, using artificial intelligence and automation tools helps in a seamless knowledge-sharing process among public clouds, which facilitates making processes faster and smoother with streamlined responses.
2. Enhanced Cloud Security Accompanied by Minimized Threat Surfaces: Meta-cloud helps in taming the complications of multi-cloud architecture with centralized cloud security provisions, and accompanied by operational visibility, it empowers insurtechs to reduce threat surfaces to a considerable extent. By leveraging shared meta-resources, businesses can overcome the inherent challenges that are usually associated with multi-cloud strategies, which are often fragmented. The super cloud mitigates the complexities with the provision of standardized security parameters that are configurable for each cloud provider, leading to a more streamlined and controlled approach to handling complexities.
The key benefit of adopting the meta cloud is to avoid the siloed approach to managing stringent security parameters for each cloud service provider. It is achieved by optimizing the CLI’s standardized security parameters that are streamlined for optimal safety. Moreover, meta cloud provides the staging zone to check the security measures ahead of deployment to specific providers, which includes solutions and applications for FinOps and DevSecOps. There is strict scrutiny over vulnerability measure processes, and meta cloud incorporates the potentials for BCB, DR, failback and failover scenarios. It helps to identify and reduce unwanted services, significantly mitigating potential risks and threat surfaces and enhancing a high level of data security in the public cloud.
3. Optimizing the Available IT Resources: Amid the current shortage of IT talent, insurtechs must make the most of their in-house IT team. This can be done by empowering the cloud team to make the most with fewer resources, and meta cloud empowers insurtechs to optimize their resources with the minimal number of specialists that are required to monitor specific platforms. With automation, all processes are streamlined, and IT resources are given ample time to focus on strategic innovations by contributing to highly valuable tasks.
With the adoption of standardized meta-skills, the training time of IT staff is significantly reduced as the general skills help accelerate the learning cycles with strategic implementation of these skills throughout the cloud department. Moreover, the entire process of communication and command is thoroughly streamlined, which speeds tasks and mitigates the risks of miscommunication among the cloud teams, leading to enhanced productivity and efficiency in all processes.
See also: The Cloud: Connecting the Insurance Ecosystem
Common Challenges With Multi-Cloud Adoption and How to Manage Them Smartly
There are some challenging factors associated with the meta cloud, like enhanced complexity, a lack of support from cloud service providers factoring in commoditization and development challenges. Businesses need to consider these factors before making a strategic move toward the adoption of a layer of automation and abstraction over a multi-cloud architecture.
InsurTechs need to consider:
1. Misalignment in CLI Configuration: There can be misalignment in the CLI configuration with APIs, leading to more complexity and a rise in technical debt, slow processes and blind spots. The way to avoid this scenario is to take precautions in creating the perfect alignment with CLI’s configurations with APIs so that IT teams don’t have any challenges in smoothly navigating the compatibility layer for faster processes and streamlined operations.
2. Inadequate Vendor Support: There can be a lack of vendor support owing to commoditization, which takes away the competitive advantage. Therefore, choosing a vendor that provides dedicated support services with an expert team ensures multiple support channels to help with the quick resolution of concerns regarding adequate support. By taking care of an SLA agreement that clearly defines the level of support in times of escalations, response times can help minimize the operational complexities. If the meta cloud vendor’s existing capabilities do not suffice for business requirements, then third-party support can be sought to gain operational efficiencies.
3. Development Challenges: There can be development constraints ,as only a few vendors provide CLI services due to commoditization, and businesses have to calibrate by opting for the trial-and-error method. This can lead to enhanced complexities as the lack of synchronization between the common points of interaction, say the interfaces of service providers and APIs, can be difficult. This limitation can be overcome with the identification of alternative approaches and tools that can help in smart management and optimal use of meta-cloud resources.
Additionally, leveraging open-source tools, adopting newer methodologies, for example, infrastructure as a code, and making optimal usage of existing resources can help businesses. It is also recommended to participate in the different vendor communities that can help in gaining relevant understanding, and collaboration with vendors experiencing similar concerns can lead to the development of fresh insights. Also, leveraging open source projects on meta cloud and CLI tools can help in developing a collaborative ecosystem to better deal with any constraints.
Moreover, optimizing automated testing can further help in overcoming synchronization matters, along with change management protocols for the meta environment that enable the smooth functioning of applications and operational efficiency.
Conclusion
Adopting the meta cloud helps insurtechs surpass multi-cloud chaos. However, it is critical to carefully analyze the challenges associated with the super cloud, and mitigating those risks is the first step toward making a clear road to the wide adoption of the meta cloud.
An IT partner with years of technical excellence and domain expertise is highly recommended. The IT partner brings a dedicated team of resources that has a portfolio of successful projects in the past and can play a critical role in navigating the possibilities for bringing more coherence into the myriad cloud architectures. Insurtechs can manage their businesses smartly and cater to their customers with tailored products more efficaciously.
