The Hartford and IBM Ink $500 Million Cloud Accord

Move Aimed at Agent and Customer Service

The Hartford and IBM (NYSE: IBM) just announced a new six-year technology services agreement to implement a new service model that includes a private cloud infrastructure. The project will leverage the expertise of both firms, market insights and research to build new business models and competitive capabilities that will enhance The Hartford’s ability to anticipate and meet the needs of customers and agents.

The partnership supports The Hartford’s strategy to drive profitable growth and increase operational effectiveness as it continues to focus on its property and casualty, group benefits and mutual funds businesses, according to the company.

The Hartford will move to a private cloud-based infrastructure on IBM’s PureFlex System. Under the $500 million agreement, IBM will also provide a number of other services related to mainframe, storage, backup and resiliency. The Hartford will define the services it requires, and IBM will be responsible for the solution and delivery of those services.

“Today’s announcement is an example of how leading organizations are utilizing cloud technology to gain competitive advantage,” said Philip Guido, general manager, IBM Global Technology Services, North America. “Clients today are looking for IT partners who can understand and help drive their business with a focus on innovation and delivering business outcomes, not just IT efficiency. This expansion of our partnership with The Hartford illustrates the work IBM is leading with cloud.”

A recent IBM study reveals that 66 percent of organizations are using cloud to strengthen the relationship between IT and lines of business, and the majority are using cloud to integrate and apply mobile, social, analytics and Big Data technologies.

As part of the agreement, The Hartford and IBM will also partner on the creation of a joint innovation committee to foster collaboration on strategic initiatives. The project will leverage the expertise of both firms, market insights and research to build new business models and competitive capabilities that will enhance The Hartford’s ability to anticipate and meet the needs of customers and agents. As part of the agreement, The Hartford and IBM will also partner on the creation of a joint innovation committee to foster collaboration on strategic initiatives.

IBM has helped more than 30,000 clients around the world with its 40,000 industry experts. Since its acquisition in 2013, IBM SoftLayer has served 4,500 new cloud clients. Today, IBM has 100+ cloud SaaS solutions, thousands of experts with deep industry knowledge helping clients transform and a network of 40 data centers worldwide. Since 2007, IBM has invested more than $7 billion in 17 acquisitions to accelerate its cloud initiatives and build a high value cloud portfolio. IBM holds 1,560 cloud patents focused on driving innovation. In fact, IBM for the 21st consecutive year topped the annual list of US patent leaders. IBM processes more the 5.5M client transactions daily through IBM’s public cloud. For more information about IBM cloud offerings, visit http://www.ibm. com/cloud.

The Hartford, with more than 200 years of experience, is a leader in property and casualty insurance, group benefits and mutual funds.

What is Cloud Computing?

As explained by Judith Hurwitz, Robin Bloor, Marcia Kaufman, and Fern Halper from Cloud Computing For Dummies, edited for the Insurance Advocate®

CLOUD COMPUTING IS THE NEXT STAGE IN THE INTERNET’S EVOLUTION, providing the means through which everything — from computing power to computing infrastructure, applications, business processes to personal collaboration — can be delivered to you as a service wherever and whenever you need.

The “cloud” in cloud computing can be defined as the set of hardware, networks, storage, services, and interfaces that combine to deliver aspects of computing as a service. Cloud services include the delivery of software, infrastructure, and storage over the Internet (either as separate components or a complete platform) based on user demand. (See http://www.dummies.com/howto/ content/cloud-computing-models.html?cid=embedlink for the lowdown on the way clouds are used.)

Cloud computing has four essential characteristics: elasticity and the ability to scale up and down, self-service provisioning and automatic deprovisioning, application programming interfaces (APIs), billing and metering of service usage in a pay-as-you-go model. This flexibility is what is attracting individuals and businesses to move to the cloud.

The world of the cloud has lots of participants:

• The end user who doesn’t have to know anything about the underlying technology.

• Business management who needs to take responsibility for the governance of data or services living in a cloud. Cloud service providers must provide a predictable and guaranteed service level and security to all their constituents. (Find out what providers have to consider in Cloud Computing Issues.)

• The cloud service provider who is responsible for IT assets and maintenance.

Cloud computing is offered in different forms: public clouds, private clouds, and hybrid clouds, which combine both public and private.

Cloud computing can completely change the way companies use technology to service customers, partners, and suppliers. Some businesses, such as Google and Amazon, already have most of their IT resources in the cloud. They have found that it can eliminate many of the complex constraints from the traditional computing environment, including space, time, power, and cost.