NU Online News Service, March 9, 1:59 p.m. EST

Executives are operating in a new market environment, and their strategy for the future is to concentrate on growth and experiment with the possibilities of technology, according to a survey of chief information officers.

Celent released its 8^th annual U.S. Insurance CIO Survey that received responses from 32 executives, primarily from the property and casualty side of the insurance world.

Speaking to the results during a webinar, Donald Light, a consultant with Celent and author of the report, made the analogy that the insurance industry was like his trip into New York—stuck in traffic and not going anywhere because of a huge pothole he called the recession.

This year the attitude is different, and so was his trip into New York, he said, where traffic was slow but moving.

“[The industry] is cruising along and making some progress,” he added.

Among CIOs, there is the feeling of economic recovery and the start of some climbing back. With that, CIOs saw a modest increase in spending in their area.

Many executives believe that there is a “new normal” brought on by the recession, Mr. Light said. That new normal is a challenging and uncertain economic environment, and to meet the challenge, executives are looking to grow their business either through acquisition or moving into new markets.

On the technology end of the business, the survey finds that .NET and Windows are continuing to gain shares as preferred technology platforms.

The report's other findings:

• SOA (service-oriented architecture)/web services have emerged from the research and development stage to become an integrated standard.
• Insurers are using ITO (information technology outsourcing) and BPO (business process outsourcing) for limited, targeted functions, such as development, maintenance and infrastructure.
• For core systems, CIOs prefer best-of-breed from vendors and/or internal development.
• Operational SaaS (software as a service) and limited social networking are the big emerging technologies stories.

While the survey cannot be considered a statistically complete overview of the insurance industry, Mr. Light said, it does correlate with what the consulting firm is hearing from its clients and generally about the industry.