Further to your request of 15 April 2011 in recent Regional IT Conference, enclosed please find a copy of my report for AIA Malaysia entitled Are we ready for Cloud Computing for your review.
This report will started with summary of current IT Infrastructure environment of AIA Malaysia, together with the issue and challenges that IT faced..
In additional, this report also provides outlines on the concept of Cloud Computing, the benefits and cost of Cloud Computing.
Nevertheless, recommendations are also provided for the adoption/adaption of Cloud Computing, and the possible countermeasure for avoiding risk happen in the future.
At the end of this report, a conclusion is given on Cloud Computing adoption is available for your review.
Feel free to call me shall any further clarification and/or comment regarding this report is required.
Thank you.
Regards,
Lay Chin
IT Governance Officer
Possibility of Cloud Computing to AIA
Submitted :
Prepared by :
Word Count :
22 May 2011
Ng, Lay Chin (Student No: 0039832502)
Executive Summary
The report is prepared for AIA Berhad, for the objective to analyzing current IT Structure Environment, issue and challenge; and possibility for adopting Cloud Computing.
Table of Contents
1 INTRODUCTION 1
1.1 About AIA Group 1
2 IT INFRASTRUCTURE: ISSUE AND CHALLENGES 3
2.1 Current IT Infrastructure Environment 3
2.2 Issue and Challenge of AMDC (AIA Malaysia Data Center) 6
3 CLOUD COMPUTING AND ITS BUSINESS BENEFITS AND COSTS 8
3.1 Cloud Computing Service Models 8
3.2 Cloud Computing Deployment Models 8
3.3 The Business Benefits of Adopting Cloud Computing 9
3.4 Cost of Adopting Cloud Computing 10
4 RECOMMENDATION 11
4.1 Assessing Existing IT Service Catalog 11
4.2 Business Need Analysis via Competitive Force Models 11
4.3 Cloud Planning and Design 13
4.4 Strategy of Adopting Cloud Computing 14
5 CONCLUSIONS 15
REFERENCES 16
APPENDICES 17
Appendix 1 - Journal 17
INTRODUCTION
About AIA Group
American International Assurance known as AIA (SEHK: 1299, www.aia.com), a leading Life Insurance Organisation in ASIA for more than 90 years. It also was member of American Internal Group, Inc (AIG) (NYSE: AIG, www.aig.com), a world market leader in insurance and financial services, with operations in more than 130 countries.
AIA's corporate roots began in Asia when the group Founder Cornelius Vander Staff , who first established American Asiatic Underwriter (AAU) in Shanghai in year 1919. In 1931 Starr joined British and Chinese businessmen in a partnership and established the International Assurance Company (INTASCO) in China. In between year 1931 to 1939, it expands the wing to other ASIA markets in Singapore (1931), Hong Kong (1932), Malaysia (1933) and Thailand (1938). In year 1948, Staff added "American" to the company's name, changed the company's abbreviated name to AIA, and assigned it the Southeast Asian territories of Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand and the home-base front of Hong Kong. Subsequently, AIA has been further expanded it business to Indonesia, Brunei, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, Macau, South Korea and finally Vietnam in year 2000.
With substantial volatility in global financial markets following 2008- 2009 crisis, AIG announced to position American International Assurance Company, Ltd (AIA Group) as an independent entity and seek a public listing on an Asian Stock Exchange. Finally, AIA Group started new chapter on 17 Oct 2010, which has successfully listed on the Main Board of Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
In year 2008, AIA Malaysia as one of the subsidies of AIA Group has gone thru localization process under the statutory procedure set out in Section 128 and 133 of the Insurance Act 1996, and successfully transferred of AIA's Life Insurance business to American International Assurance Bhd (AIA Bhd). This localization is also signified it long term commitment to the development of the insurance and financial planning market in Malaysia.
AIA Malaysia severed as one of the country's largest life insurance; it is strongly backed by more the 1,000 dedicated staffs located in the Head Quarter in Kuala Lumpur and 23 branch networks reaching out to all Malaysians. For serving more than 2 million policy holders, it is fully supported by over 10,000 Experience Wealth Advisor.
Corporate Vision, Strategy & Culture
To align with the & Corporate Vision is to be the pre-eminent life insurance provider in the Asia Pacific region, AIA Malaysia is fully committed to strategy for growth is to
Build its tied agency distribution strength in all markets;
Expand and broaden its bancassurance (banctakaful) and direct marketing distribution channel;
Deepen relationships with customer through cross-selling and up-selling opportunities;
Increase the proportion of high margin products;
Drive operational efficiencies to further streamline its business and costs saving; and
Be choice of employee.
AIA Malaysia is leading by Mr. Khor Hock Seng, who strongly believe that people is the great assets for the organisation. The company culture is based on five values as People, Customer Focus, Performance, Integrity, Respect and Entrepreneurship.
Key Products & Services
For fulfilling unique needs of customers in Malaysia Market, AIA Malaysia is offering a comprehensive range of products and services for individuals on Protection, Savings, Investment, Retirement and Loan. It also provides Group Employee Benefit to corporate clients and Customer Insurance for Business
In Dec 2010, AIA Malaysia has been granted new Family Takaful License by Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) along with Alliance Bank Malaysia as its joints venture partner as new company named AIA Alliance Takaful Berhad (AATB), which aims to create and introduce innovative and competitive Shariah Compliant Solution for the needs of the Muslim community in Malaysia.
Distribution Channel
To ensure the customer can reach us whenever they need, there are about 10,000 qualified Wealth Advisor across the country are ready to provide quality services. On top of this, there also alternative marketing distribution channel as below
Direct Marketing,
Bancassurance (Banctakaful)
Worksite Marketing
As one of Business Strategy to "Growth of Distribution Channel", Strategy Alliance Relationship are establish between AIA Malaysia and CWA (CIMB Wealth Advisor) in Mar 2009. This 3rd party agent will represent AIA Malaysia to provide investment and financial planning advisory services in both Insurance Products as well as Takaful Products managed by AATB
Major Business Process
The Business Process of AIA Malaysia is broadly divided into following categories as below
Agency Force Management
Alternate Distribution
Customer Management
Finance
Human Resource & Training
Operations
Products & Marketing
IT INFRASTRUCTURE: ISSUE AND CHALLENGES
AIA Malaysia Business Processes are supported by 70+ Business Applications under an integrated network platform, which consists of Local Area Network (LAN) and Wide Area Network (WAN). The integrated networks is key fundamental to ensure the integration connectivity and system availability among the 70+ Business Application in between the Regional Office in Hong Kong, Head Office in Kuala Lumpur and 23 branches across Malaysia. The critical task for maintaining the availability is fall under our Data Centre responsibility.
Our Data Centre (DC or known as AMDC, AIA Malaysia Data Center) Department is formed by 37 permanent staff with professional skill range from Infrastructure Designer, Technical Engineer, Network Specialist, Security Officer, Helpdesk Officer and Operations Supports. All the 37 staff is dedicated for supporting difference components of IT Infrastructure.
Current IT Infrastructure Environment
In general, our IT Infrastructure is composed of six components as described below together with the issue and challenge for managing those IT Infrastructure components.
Computer Hardware Platform
The computer hardware is including Desktop Personal Computer and mobile computing devices such as Blackberry, Laptops and Server machines. As computer hardware is come from difference vendor and supplier, e.g. IBM, HP, Dell, Intel, Sun Microsystems, the integration setup within computer hardware are important for ensuring system availability. As at year 2010, we have 150 servers, 800+ Personal Desktop and 400+ Notebook in our IT Assets Inventory List.
On top of company owned computer hardware. our DC staff is also need to provide services to our agent' for connectivity setup on their notebook. This is to facilitating their services to policy prospect on policy illustration via our in-house developed Point of Sales software.
Operation System Platform
An operating system (OS) is software that run on computer hardware for managing the resource and activities of its. It also provides common services for execution of various application softwares. One of the most popular OS software is Microsoft Windows Operation System, which running on majority of our company desktop and notebook. However, there is also other OS software running in our server due to difference application architecture design. For example, the LifeComm(LFCM) System is running on Mainframe OSz software, LifeAsia System, HIAS System and Ingenium Systems running on AS400 platform, but GIS Application is running on UNIX platform.
For ensuring the functionality of OS software is aligned with the change of Technology, regular update is always requested by the vendor of respective OS via patches. A patch is a piece of software, which designed for fix problem or improving the usability or performance of the software. And, patching activities is always required intensive resource for managing from impact analysis to post patching evaluation.
On top of patches, the OS vendor will also launched new version of OS software, and revamp the older version of OS Software. OS Software version upgrade is always consists of major changes on the OS functionality and configuration. Therefore, every software version upgrade is required detail especially on impact analysis study and upgrade approach. For large scale of upgrade like Mainframe OSz upgrade from version 10 to version 15 which happen in one of the weekend of Dec 2010, on top of the IT Staff from both Infrastructure and Application who is mandatory for it, it will also required involvement from end user to verify the LifeComm (LFCM) Application after the OS software upgrade,
In certain circumstance, we may required to send our IT staff for attending training prior OS software upgrade or engage vendor consultant/engineer in the OS Software Upgrade.
Data Management and Storage
There are two types of Data Management and Storage in general, one is Database Management System (DBMS), which is a software for managing and organising the business data so that it can be efficiently assessed and used by application program; another one is Physical Data Storage Management, which mainly managing the file storage, like PC hard disk, traditional disk arrays, tape libraries, etc.
Most of our business data are storing in relational database under DBMS; example of DBMS used in our company is DB2 for Investment Link Policy via Ingenium Application. Due to the increase of our business volume and also record retention requirement by Malaysia Parliament Bank Negara Malaysia under Insurance Act 1996 xxxxxxx; our Storage of DBMS has substantially increase almost 8% every year. For managing the relation database, we are required an IT Specialist with knowledge of Database Management skill, or Database Administrator (DBA) in general. The DBA is playing important role in managing the database environment from design, implementation, maintenance and repair of organization's database; On top of this, our DBA is also playing roles for monitoring the database performance in term Input/Output rate of the application process and also planning for future expansion requirement based on projected business volume.
In our company, we have only two DBAs to handle 55+ databases that connected via business application every day. Due to this resource constraint that has fully occupied by handling day-to-day activities, we have lacking of sufficient time for future expansion planning for aligning with our Business Strategy to grown our business.
The DBMS do have same upgrade approach like other IT Infrastructure Software. On top of resource constraint issue to handling software upgrade activities, we may also required to purchase additional hardware like hard disk space for the upgrade activities.
Networking/Telecommunications
As basic definition, a network is referred to a collection of computer hardware devices that interconnected by communication channels for enabling communication.
In the large organisation like us, which required both network and telecommunication setup for enabling connectivity within 70+ Business Application in between our Head Office and also across 23 branches in Malaysia. As such, the design and management of network and telecommunication is very crucial for ensuring availability of network and telecommunication.
To enable the collection of computer hardware devices to made up a network within our building as Local Area Network (LAN), the following basic hardware components are required
Network Interface Card (NIC), a piece of computer hardware designed to allow computer to communicate over a computer network; most computer hardware today have this card built into the motherboard.
Network Operating System (NOS) for managing the routing of communications and network resource coordination.
Repeaters, it is an electronic device that receives a network signal, cleans it of unnecessary interference, regenerates it before retransmits it at a higher power level, so that the network signal can over longer distances.
Switch/ Bridge, It filters and forward data to a specified destination on the network.
Routers, it is communication processor used for routing the data packet through difference networks.
Hubs, it joins multiple network devices together to form a single network.
Our Telecommunication Service Provider, Telekom Malaysia plays an important role for linking up the network between Head Officer and 23 branches across Malaysia.
Internet Platform
Internet is a International Network or Global Network, which allow people communicating regards of location. For our internal network to connect with internet, it is required to subscribe to an Internet Service Providers (ISP), e.g. Telekom Malaysia. Our company internet platform is setting up mainly for the purpose to communicate with their parties, e.g. Agent, financial institute, governance body and business partners.
AIADirect (https://www.aiadirect.com.my/agent/loginS21.asp) is secured Internet Website developed for Agents, it is connected directly with several business application for providing on-line services to agent. With this, agent will able to submit the New Business Case/Cover Note after got the eApplication Form filled via Electronic Application Submission System (EASY). And, they can also checking the status of the submitted cases at any where and any time. On top of this, the agency leader also able to monitor their agent sales performance, policy persistency and sales campaign tracking via this internet website.
Other than Agent, our Corporate Client can submit the employment claim via eBenefits application to us for speeding up the claim processing.
The internet platform also create the conveniences for the internal staff to
upload/download the policy billing information from Bank Extranet website for bank reconciliation by finance user
upload the loan borrower information to Local Regulator's system, CCRIS.
Enterprise Software Applications
Enterprise application software is external developed application software based on industry Best Practices. One of the popular Enterprise application software, SAP which has implemented by Group Finance early of this year to all 14 countries across Asia Pacific Region.
Issue and Challenge of AMDC (AIA Malaysia Data Center)
All adopted infrastructure components as described above required to be coordinated and managed properly in order to provide the firm with a coherent IT Infrastructure. However, with the rapid change of Information Technology, volume of hardware component and the available IT resources in our organization, we are always facing challenges with following IT Issue.
IT Budgets
Meeting budget is always tough for every budget owner; it is especially challenging for IT budget. Infrastructure purchase and maintenance are one of the key impact to IT Budget Control.
IT Infrastructure is never an one-time investment, but the time-span is highly depending on continually upgrade. Software Version Upgrade is happen almost every two years, In order to ensure Vendor support for available version; we are always required to have OS upgrade accordingly. And, the upgrade is also required to purchase additional hardware, e.g. memory, Central Processing Unit (CPU), etc.
IT Resource
Our Data Center suffers from a bad reputation when it comes to satisfying our staff/agent needs. We have problem to improve the services due to resource constraint issue.
Our staff is burnout as workflow increased for supporting the diversified type of IT infrastructure components,. In additional, due to increasing concern as tighten budget control, we also facing challenge for recruiting skilled IT Personal or sending our existing IT staff for attending training as part of employee benefit. The frustration among the IT Staff can clearly reflected in IT turnover rate in past six months.
IT Complexity
When we analyst the progress of Personal Computer from IBM PC, which launched in 80s' to today's system, one obvious tread is irrefutable. The IT world has gotten increasing complex and has reaching a point of critical. Today, a single IT staff is no longer able to know everything, which needed to be proficient at his or her job. And obviously, company also no able to recruit IT Skilled Staff for every IT Infrastructure Component. As such, we already required to engage external consultant for involving in major IT project, like SAP. This has become added burden in IT Budget control.
IT Resource Optimization
In our company, each department is being allocated with certain file server storage for the common sharing among the department staff. And, there are also storage space allocated for dedicated project for allowing project documentation sharing among the project committee or members; e.g. Ingenium Project. However, most of the allocated storage space are no being fully utilized or managed properly; Instead, many of files has never being updated after first saved in the file server; or become orphan as no ownership has been claimed. Most of the time, there are either being miss used and under utilized instead.
On top of this, the wrong estimation of disk space allocation on production server also caused wastage on IT investment as well as resource on space management.
CLOUD COMPUTING AND ITS BUSINESS BENEFITS AND COSTS
So, what is Cloud Computing?
Cloud computing can be defined as a new style of computing model, not a technology. In this computing model, all the IT Infrastructure Components that related to Data Centers are available to Business via the Internet; and it allows Business to buy only the type and size of IT Infrastructure Services that they required.
Cloud Computing Service Models
In general, the cloud computing are being composed of three services models as below:
Infrastructure as a Services (IaaS).
It is provision model that organization outsource it IT Infrastructure devices to service provider, which include grids or clusters or virtualized servers, networks, storage and system software. The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible for housing, running and maintaining it. The client typically pays on a per-use basis.
Platform as a Services (PaaS)
Similar to IaaS that outsource It hardware devices, but also includes operating systems, storage, network capability and any other required services for a particular application. This service delivery model allows the customer to rent virtualized server and associated service for running existing application or developing and testing new ones.
Software as a Services (SaaS) or Application as a Services (AaaS)
It is most common type of services available by cloud provided. It provides all the functions that required for application execution. It eliminates worries about application server, storage, application development, etc. Users use variety of devices, including PCs, laptops and smart-phones to access the services over the internet; example Instant messaging from AOL, Google's Gmail and Apps, etc.
Cloud Computing Deployment Models
There are four Cloud Computing Deployment Models based on need of service recipients
Public Cloud
As the name stated, it is made available to the general public or a large group of specific industry group. Normally, it is solely owned by organization that selling cloud services. Most of time, the subscribers is only pay for what has used, which is low investment for many small or medium company. However, it is no suitable for financial company due to security concern on data may be stored in unknown location and the IT organization may react negatively to loss of control over data center function.
Private Cloud
It is solely operated for an organization that caused fewer security concerns as existing data center security stays in place and It Organization retains control over data center. However, it is high investment hurdle in private cloud implement for company with less than 100 servers.
Hybrid Cloud
It is a combination of at least one private cloud and at least one public cloud. Due the hybrid combination, it provide operation flexibility to the subscribers by planning run production application on private cloud, and setting up development and testing environment on public cloud. However, there are still some risks as hybrid cloud are still in pre-mature stage, not many in real use.
The Business Benefits of Adopting Cloud Computing
Up to now, the adoption of cloud computing in the insurance industry is till in its early stages, with only a handful of emerging vendor offering vertical industry-focused cloud computing services tailored to the needs of insurers. However, this is starting to change, as advances in the industry have already underlined the potential of cloud.
By adopting cloud computing, we could potentially gain the following benefits:
IT Budget Control
Compared with spending on Infrastructure Purchase and Maintenance in non-Cloud Computing, there only little or no upfront expenditure with Cloud Computing. As such, this no only saving in IT Expenditure and also increase IT Budget Mobility and Optimization as IT usage is pay-as-you-used basis in Cloud Computing Model.
Handle Peaks in demand more easily and at lower cost
With Cloud Computing, IT Management can handle the business demand more easily and at lower cost. IT Management is no required to purchase extra infrastructure device (e.g. storage) for stand-by on demand, service and storage are available on demand and are charged as a pay-as-you-used service, which also help in cost saving in waster resources as described before and also reduce the hassle of insufficient storage.
Reduce speed to market and drive new business opportunity
In the past, introducing of new business process with IT Infrastructure involved, required months of time for purchasing new hardware (or software), installation, configuration, testing and implementation; which has caused delay in market penetration. For example, part of delay of the Automobile Underwriting Project caused by time consuming in new IT infrastructure configuration and testing. With Cloud Computing, this issue can be resolved by IT Specialist from CSP, who is Subject Matter Expert (SME); and our IT management can fully concentrating in Business Process setting. As such, this will help to reduce speed to market and drive new business opportunity efficiencies and effectiveness.
IT Transformation
As one of characteristics of Cloud Computing; all the provided IT Infrastructure Services will be managed and maintained by Cloud Service Provider (CSP) for either hardware or software. With this, the worry of keeping software up-to-date or worry about constant server updates and other computing issues can no longer border our IT Management, who can force a move to a Service-Oriented model and concentrating on innovation that align with business strategy instead.
IT Cost Optimization
Optimizing IT Cost and value requires a continued focus on efficiency, as well as the exploration of new processes and delivery modes that can help the IT Management deliver more value to the enterprise. The new paradigm of cloud computing appears to be promising in addressing the fundamental IT concerns.
Cost of Adopting Cloud Computing
However, before enjoy the above mention business benefits, there are six main challenges need to be overcome, which impact cost of adopting Cloud Computing.
Cloud Service Provider Lock-in
By adopting Cloud Computing, our loss the control over physical security and has not knowledge or control of where the resources are run. Till today, there are no cloud computing standards for APIs, the storage of server image for disaster recovery, and data import and export. In addition, if we are dissatisfied with the CSP - or if the CSP goes out of business - it could be costly to transfer service to another CSP or bring it back in-house.
Lack of Control and Transparency
In using cloud infrastructures, we are necessarily code control to be CSP on a number of issues which may affect application integrity and data security. For Application that subscribing via Cloud Computing, which undergo constant feature additions, and user need to be mentally prepared for keeping up-to-date with application improvements and to be sure they are protected. As the data access is beyond our control, we may no have sufficient information to demonstrate who has access to our data and how CSP control the unauthorized personnel from retrieving information, especially those Customer Data.
Compliance Challenges
Most compliance regulations required that data not be intermixed with data, such as on shared servers or database. For example, under AIA Group Security Standard required segregation of Application Environment from Development, Testing and Production. And, Bank Negara Malaysia has strict limits on retention period of business transaction data and requires customer financial data remain in home country. All these will be more challenging in the cloud computing environment as well.
Network Bandwidth Cost
We may be able to save money on equipment and software with Cloud Computing, buy we also likely incur higher network-bandwidth changes from the CSP due to the substantial network traffic. The network bandwidth changes for replicating a huge amount of data, for example in disaster recovery situation, could make cloud computing cost prohibitive.
Resource Provisioning
Cloud Services are on-demand services and therefore resource allocation is based on projection, Inaccurate modeling of resource usage or inadequate resource provisioning in infrastructure can lead to service unavailability and access control issues.
RECOMMENDATION
Cloud Computing is not about new technologies but also a new business model for adopters. Decision on adopting of Cloud Computing required carefully planning for avoiding unforeseen impact to business, customer and also regulatory requirement.
Prior kick-off this major IT Project, a project team need to be setup with few key starting any IT Investment, the project team need to be first established with user representative from difference business functional area.
Assessing Existing IT Service Catalog
The project team should first identify the list of IT services that current provided to the organization. As defined in Part 2 of this report, the IT service catalog can be defined in to following categories
Computer Hardware Services, which include new hardware purchasing and request for hardware failure diagnosis. The list of inventory will able to help the project to understand cost of IT Hardware investment as well as on-going maintenance/upgrade fees.
Application Network Connectivity Request
Data Management and Storage Services
Operation System Services
Internet Access Services
Enterprise Service Application Services.
The good understanding of scope of existing IT Services will help the project team in Cloud Services Providers Selection justification.
Business Need Analysis via Competitive Force Models
The general objective of IT infrastructure management is to provide a coherent and balance set of IT Services to our employee, customer, agents and business partners. As such, assess business needs is one of key success factor in Cloud Computing adopting.
For these, I would like to recommend adoption of Competitive Force Models, which will help the project team to assess the business needs from both internal and external parties. There are six areas to cover under Competitive Force Models as below:-
Market Demand for our services
Conduct an IT Services Survey to our IT services receiver, employee, agent and also business partners. It is to understand their needs, comment and expectation on our IT services. Based on the result of the survey, project team can perform further analysis for survey to get the gap between the market demand and delivered services.
For example, our staff and Agent are dissatisfied with the IT Services provided by our Data Center, the complaint should further asses in order to understand the root caused of dissatisfaction occurred.
Business Strategy
On top of the Market Demand, which served like user's wish list on IT Services, the Business Strategy is equally import when assessing the need of any major IT Investment.
Business goal is normally defined by respective business process owner for aligning with Business Strategy. Project Team is encouraged to find out business goal of each process owner for qualifying this IT investment and as well as setting up the future vision of such IT Investment.
Below are few business goal that required by senior user management
Automobile Underwriting for enabling Underwriter to perform the risk assessment via mobile technology.
Revamp of existing Agent Portal for an Integrated and comprehensive tool, which enabling agent to perform total customer analysis in term of Retirement, Protection, Education, Investment, Property, and Market Available Products.
Unify the existing Policy Administration Application for enabling policy of difference line of business to be administrated under single platform for operational efficiency
Information Technology Strategy
Project Team is required to examining the current IT Strategy for ensuring the Cloud Computing is in-line for IT Alignment with Business Strategy. Change of existing IT Strategy due to the IT Major investment should be avoided, unless strong justification is provided.
For companies that highly depended on Information Technology, like us for handling daily business function; Information Technology alignment is mandatory for assisting our company to achieve business goal as per the Business Strategy.
And, the benefit of the IT Investment should be focusing on
Improves customer satisfaction and customer retention.
Reduce both product development costs and cycles for maintaining the competitive advantages,
Improve the efficiency of business operations for achieving higher profitability
Cost Saving for allocating the fund into more critical task for improving overall business performance.
Information Technology Assessment
On top of assessing the Market Demand, Business Strategy and IT Strategy as described above, Project Team is also recommending to perform Internal Assessment on Information Technology Division.
Decision of Adopting of Cloud Computing is definition a "BIG" event that will caused change in Business Operation as well as IT agility and resilience. As such, performing IT assessment is mandatory for analysis the strength and weakness of following critical areas:-
IT Asset Inventory
IT Operation Management
IT Security Management
IT infrastructure Change Management
IT Outsourcing Management
IT Service Level Assessment
IT Human Resource Assessment
IT Standard, Process and Compliance Assessment
Among of listed IT Assessment as above, I would like to specially highlight the important of IT Human Resource Assessment, which also align with one of our Business Strategy in "To b Choice of Employer"
Nevertheless, the adoption of Cloud Computing is not only change of Information Technology Services Model, but also big impact to our existing pool of IT Staff. IT Staff who currently servicing single section of Information Technology like Network Specialist, will be required to transform this job function more on coordination and managerial. As such, interviewing with IT Staff is should be part of IT Assessment on their view on Cloud Computing Adoption, their awareness of such service model changes as well as their worry about such changes. The result of such resource assessment will give big help in human resource arrangement during Cloud Computing Adoption.
On top of assessment on Internal IT Standard, Process and Guideline, Project team is also required to assess Local Regulatory Guideline, e.g. Bank Negara Malaysia as below
BNMRH/GL 013-3: Guidelines on Business Continuity Management (BCM)
JPI/GPI/31 : Guidelines on Outsourcing for Insurer
BNM/RH/GL 018-1: Guideline on Data Management and MIS Framework
GPIS 1: Guideline on Management of IT Environment
The Personal Data Protection Act, which just passed by Dewan Rakyat last year should not be neglected as it will justified the decision of type of Cloud Computing adoption later.
Competitors Services
Beside assessment on both Business Process as well as IT Operation Process, the assessment of our Competitors should not be neglected. The scope of assessment is further assessed to our competitor for comparing the providing business services.
The business services/ product that have provided by our competitor but not yet provided by us should be noted and further analysis the root caused of it. It should be taken into consideration when designing scope of cloud computing.
IT Investment of Competitors
The IT Investment amount of Competitors is also one of the assessment areas, which also serve as another good comparison in term IT Services.
Cloud Planning and Design
With all the detail study of current IT Infrastructure Operation Model and Business Needs Assessment, Project team can do Cloud Planning and Design.
When do the Planning and Design, Project Team is be reminded the general object of IT Infrastructure should reminded unchanged as for
Ensuring adherence to IT standards as well as requirement of local Regulatory.
Promoting adaptability necessary for a changeable environment
Ensuring interoperability among organizational and external entities
Enhancing the flow of information throughout an information system
Ensuring that management policies and practices are in tune with the IT needs
On top of this, Project Team should not only engage the initial stakeholder in an organization for Cloud design, but forming up a sub-committee as working group, which consists of representative from across IT and Business. For representative from IT, the representative should from
IT Capacity and Performance Team for ensuring cloud performs as well as - or better than the physical alternative.
IT Network Team for ensuring network connectivity reliability and availability
IT Storage Team for justifying the minimum storage size of Cloud design, and forecasting possible demand with this new technology.
IT Application Team, who worked closely with user, familiar with existing IT Application Architecture and also future requirement that might caused potential change on Clond design
For
change of demand grow significantly , whose
, e.g. representative from finance department, who can help to identify as below
.
With the participation of this working group, it helps the project team to
collect the business expectation on this new computing model
hedge against the risk of omitting key requirement
get their support as the project progress.
Strategy of Adopting Cloud Computing
After the assessment done for deciding on Cloud Computing Investment, the project steering committee should presented result of the assessment Information Technology Steering Committee (ITSC) to acknowledge for further action.
Project Management Team
Defining Scope of Project
Selection of Vendor
Change Management
Communication
Service Level Agreement
CONCLUSIONS
Up to now, the adoption of Cloud Computing in the Insurance Industry is still in its early stages, with only a handful of emerging vendor offering vertical industry-focused cloud computing services tailored to the need of insurers.
How, this is starting to change. For example, Salesforce.com has achieved success in horizontal SaaS solutions in the sector, and Microsoft has implemented its SharedPoint Online at a major global carrier. These steps forward demonstrate insurance companies' appetites, willingness, and ability to move key capabilities to a Cloud Business Models.
By adopting Cloud Computing, insurance companies could potentially gain the following benefits:
Reduce total cost of IT Ownership and operation.
Drive new business and engage customers more effectively through new distribution model
Handle peaks in demand more easily and at lower cost
Reduce speed to market and drive new business opportunity
Force a move IT to a service-oriented model, and also new innovation in system design.
Support integration of third party system or new business application
Despite all the potential benefits that cloud computing can offer, risks exist. Below are some area which were mentioned in part 3 of this report:-
Security and Privacy
Performance
Control of IT
Data Location and Confidentiality
Business Continuity
Of all the issue listed above, security and data privacy remain major concerns in the insurance sector, and have been key issues to date. In additional, there is one thing that does not change - accountability. Cloud Customers are still accountability for the data even if the operational responsibility falls on Cloud Service Providers.
Many insurers' reluctance to date to embrace the cloud, which offers insurance companies numerous opportunities not only to substantially reduce the amount of money they spend running IT, but also to dramatically improve how they attract and remain customer, expand the markets they serve, and design and deliver products and services.
