In the industry-observer business, one can't be at a loss forwords, but believe it or not, I've had a really difficult timecoming up with something to say about the ACORD LOMA Systems Forumheld recently in Las Vegas.

Oh, it's not that nothing noteworthy happened. On the contrary,there was just so much going on it's really difficult to condenseit all into the space allotted to me in these hallowed pages. Neverone to shrink from a challenge, however, I will give it my bestshot.

Let me start with some positives. ACORD and LOMA did a reallygood job in their education sessions at achieving their separategoals of promoting standards and providing information to helpimprove the efficiency of insurance organizations.

The sessions I attended were well thought out and occasionallyspiced with a bit of controversy–in stark contrast to the sterile,self-promotional offerings we've seen at previous conferences.While there still was too much self-promotion, the panelsespecially were more interesting and less scripted than similarofferings in years past.

On the theater-of-the-absurd side, we had startling headlinescoming out of the latest AUGIE survey, such as: "Agents AreFrustrated With Carriers' Proprietary Tech Systems." No! Really?And here I thought most independent agents just loved the varietyoffered them by hundreds of proprietary insurer Web sites andadministrative systems. Live and learn.

Can anyone explain to me why we continue to ask agents to spendtheir valuable time answering survey questions to which we alreadyknow the answers? To be sure, there was some interestinginformation coming out of the survey on agents' lack of ability toprotect customer privacy and to secure their data. That actuallywas new and useful. Quite a breakthrough, I'd say.

Behind the scenes, technology giants Microsoft and IBM continuedto fight it out for platforms and services dominance in theinsurance space. Microsoft announced its Insurance Value ChainArchitecture Framework, which according to a company spokesperson,"helps insurance customers buy pre-integrated Microsoft partnerapplications."

At the same time, the spokesperson dubbed IBM's insurancearchitecture "proprietary and monolithic, based on IBM productsuites and requiring massive consulting contracts toimplement."

According to Kevin Kelly, managing director, U.S. insuranceindustry, for Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft, "Our strategy is todeploy innovation through our partners and through oureasy-to-understand framework that is specific to insurance businessprocessing. That reduces integration expense and allows you tochoose among the partners."

On the other hand, Norbert Dick, IBM's new general manager,global insurance industry, said of Microsoft, "It has not grown upin the insurance industry. It is not insurance-specific. Its newproduct is a dramatic change, but we started doing this 12 yearsago."

The emphasis, said Dick, should be on business processtransformation to increase efficiency and speed workflow forinsurers. "This is where IBM is by far more mature [thanMicrosoft]," he stated. "IBM has been ahead of this for years now.Microsoft is more proprietary."

Meanwhile, software giants SAP and Oracle remained interestedonlookers, perhaps hoping to swoop in and grab more insurancebusiness while the platform providers battle each other. If nothingelse, this will make for a fascinating next two years as companiesare bought and sold and as alliances are forged in an effort tosecure a business advantage in the lucrative insurance technologymarket.

On the show floor, the consensus among exhibitors was most ofthe traffic they were seeing consisted of other exhibitors. That'snot necessarily a bad thing, however, especially if those otherexhibitors are your customers.

The real problem, though, was the obvious divide between theproperty/casualty and life/health universes. At last year's ACORDLOMA, the life/health vendors complained there were too manyproperty/casualty customers roaming the aisles. This year, thesituation flip-flopped, with property/casualty vendors decrying thepresence of too many life/health customers.

After last year's conference, I said LOMA and ACORD should holdseparate shows that address their very different aims. This year,the organizations did a much better job of balancing the programsand exposure at the conference. The fact remains, however, as longas the property/casualty and life/health camps remain so starklydifferent, discontent will be the norm.

The lesson and, perhaps, this year's truly startling headline is: "Oil and Water Still Don't Mix."