Guidewire Software, a provider of solutions to property/casualty and workers' compensation insurers, and Skywire Software, a diversified software company with a focus on the insurance and financial services industries, announced the formation of a strategic alliance. Through the partnership, Guidewire is able to provide its customers a Web-based rating and rules system for all lines of business. Skywire's InsBridge, helps carriers manage company-specific rating processes, analyze the impact of rating and underwriting changes, deploy logic in a disciplined and consistent manner, and make results available to Guidewire PolicyCenter users. PolicyCenter is a Web-based policy administration system.

Guidewire and Skywire offer enhanced decision-making capabilities to help carriers provide consistent rates and achieve a competitive market advantage with an end-to-end complete policy administrative system. InsBridge enhances PolicyCenter's rating and rules capabilities with the ability to perform elaborate and complex rating, rules, and underwriting logic with accuracy.

"By joining forces, Skywire Software and Guidewire are better positioned to service insurers who are taking a hard look at replacing their policy administration systems" says Priscilla Hung, vice president of alliances for Guidewire. "Our companies share customers who have expressed a desire to leverage our Web-based solutions to further enhance productivity."