Editor's Note: Vivek Gujral isexecutive vice president and CTO at OneShield.

Faced with worrisome weather patterns, a sluggish economicrecovery, lower investment returns and customer demands for 24/7responsiveness, insurers are faced with high expectations in ahigh-pressure environment.

To meet these challenges, insurers may consider turning tocloud-based offerings, specifically private and hybrid cloudservices, to rapidly deploy applications on pay-as-you-goinfrastructure while ensuring business continuity. The private andhybrid cloud models provide customers with a private environmentwhere their infrastructure is hosted and maintained by a technologyprovider allowing for maximum integration and configurationcapabilities.

Benefits of implementation include:

• Lower total cost of ownership based on shared infrastructuremodel.
• Expert application services in the insurer's own privateenvironment.
• Rapid deployment of applications on traditional platforms usingpre-made templates, increasing efficiency and consistency.
• Improved redundancy and scalability.
• Complete oversight and administration of the environment byengineers with highly focused core competencies.
• Flexible pricing model to best meet the insurer's needs; payfor what they use, making it easier to determine future growthcosts.
• Customer control over when upgrades are accepted in theproduction environment.
• Outsourced maintenance, development and configurationservices.
• Point-in-time snapshots for rapid system and data recovery.

Speed to market is another advantage of using cloud-basedsystems, as deploying applications can be done in a matter of hoursversus the weeks or months. Pre-made templates, including hardwareconfiguration and software installations in virtual form, are usedfor rapid deployment of applications. These virtual, automatedtemplates help improve consistency and efficiency, and eliminatethe old hardware procurement model, which required the purchase ofdedicated hardware and installation of an operating system.

Greater business agility has proven to be a necessarycompetitive differentiator and the cloud gives unprecedentedflexibility in terms of reducing infrastructure demands and payingfor what you need when you need it. This predictable cost modelenables insurers to more effectively plan for and strategize futurecosts and investments for their business. Private cloud also allowsfor improved redundancy and scalability. Uptime and reliability aresignificantly higher and a private cloud offering provides backupand recovery as well as ability to run redundant systems. Thisbecomes invaluable when circumstances beyond an insurer's controlarise.

Private cloud gives insurers the ability to quickly scale andprovide the highest levels of service and responsiveness all whilelowering total cost of ownership.