From Mainframes, To Servers, To PCs, Standards Remain As Key To Efficiency
It was fun to read about computer mainframes in the March 18 issue of the National Underwriter.

I graduated college and began working in the insurance business a few years after the IBM 360 made its debut. Ahhit seems like only yesterday. Doesnt it?

And along with the miniaturization of electronic components over the past 30 years, one would have thought that the mainframe would, one day, become a fond memory of a bygone era. But such is not the case.

In fact, some might have been surprised (during the Y2K fiasco) to find that mainframes were not only mission critical, but still running policy processing applications written 20 years ago.

But size became the predominant measure of modern times and advancement. Smaller was better, as in more nimble, agile and flexible. When we watch a football game, we focus on the running-backs, not the line.

But the power of the mainframe has more to do with its design and capability than its girth. The UNIVAC was born in 1951 at a cost of $1.5 million and weighed eight tons when it was delivered to the U.S. Census Bureau.

I got a chuckle when William Peironi, general manager of the global insurance sector of IBM in Armonk, N.Y., mentioned in his March 18 NU article on page 12 that mainframes were replacing massive server farms scattered about the landscape. Somewhat ironic, isnt it? The (so-called) dinosaurs are having their revenge by demonstrating what their value has been all along.

On a more recent issue, have you been hearing the (similar) rhetoric about the impending death of the PC? It is described as complicated, expensive, underutilized and unreliable.

The vision is that the PC will morph into an Internet access device with additional onboard intelligence. And perhaps like the mainframe, it will not be supplanted but supplemented by a wide range of easier to manage hardware.

Meanwhile, EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) has been a (mainframe era) batch, store and forward messaging system for business transactions. And although the real-time Internet adds immense value to our real-time business, EDI is not dead, either. It continues to be part of applications, and it is often extended to operate in a real-time Internet environment.

Last year, I saw a few insurers using the ACORD EDI (batch) Standard in a real-time Internet rating environment thought to be the exclusive domain of ACORD XML Standards. The ACORD AL3 (Automation Level 3) Standards were designed during the heyday of the mainframe era and its use has continued to dramatically expand throughout the Internet revolution itself.

Surely, integration layers have been added through the years, along with user-friendly front-ends. Even the mainframe green screens (or their technological equivalents) remain part of the landscape. And we expect AL3 to be part of the landscape to support these applications as it harmonizes with the new ACORD XML Standards for the Internet.

But let me make one thing perfectly clear about the ACORD Standards developed by our members in collaboration with their trading partners.

ACORD Standards are intended to describe insurance information (data) in a way that allows anyone (who is authorized) to use it. The Standards provide the agreed upon insurance vocabulary (dictionary) and grammar (syntax) that serve as the building blocks for messages and transactions we use to conduct the business of insurance. It is not unlike any agreed upon human language that makes commerce possible.

And since the ACORD Standards are technology-neutral and platform-independent, we can migrate the Standards along with the advancement of technology itself.

Unlike technology, the Standards are not short-lived. They not only provide a better return on your IT investment, but will provide the flexibility and agility a firm needs to function in a world of partnerships and alliances. The result is that a single firm does not need to provide all the pieces of a customer solution for the customer to have a complete solution.

So no matter what the future has in store for the mainframe, or the PC, or the Internet appliance for that matter, be assured that the ACORD (insurance) data Standards will always remain a vital element in IT strategy.

Gregory A. Maciag is president and chief executive officer of ACORD, the non-profit industry association based in Pearl River, N.Y., with offices in Belgium and the United Kingdom.

Reproduced from National Underwriter Property & Casualty/Risk & Benefits Management Edition, April 22, 2002. Copyright 2002 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.

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From Mainframes, To Servers, To PCs, Standards Remain As Key To Efficiency

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