Joe McKendrick

Enough talk about cloud and big data analytics — insurers want to see execution.

For P&C companies, cloud and analytics will define success in the year ahead, says Ernst & Young. But is that all there is?

Let's face it, big data is dumb.

The vendor that once ruled the world opened up computing to the rest of us.

Data centers are changing right in front of our eyes, but who's going to make those changes?

Marketing and IT people actually stand on common ground, looking to support customer data and interactions.

Insurers have always been at the forefront of in-house training and development, but will this carry over to tech and big data skills?

Lessons in agile development and data security were reinforced; mobile and cloud became as commonplace as telephones.

Tablet computers are becoming standard client computers, but there's still work to be done on the back end.

Coming to an insurance business near you: predictive analytics.

At least 75 percent of CIOs in a recent survey report having a clear understanding of what their businesses need in terms of innovation — now companies need them to be able to act on that understanding.

Insurers understand enterprise risk more than anyone else, and that understanding should apply to their own IT operations as well.

New figures state that 59 percent of the Fortune 500 still have at least 1.6 hours of data center downtime per week, which translates to at least $8.5 million per year in losses.

A recent interview of two IT leaders from Nationwide makes it clear that insurers, which need to speed up product delivery, are particularly good candidates for DevOps.

A nasty new "ransomware" virus is reminding corporations that you can't educate users enough when it comes to IT security.

There are several generational, technological distinctions that could drastically affect how your data operations are run in the future.

There are several examples of where algorithms can and should take over for human decision-making, but experience is starting to spotlight strategic decisions that can't be taken over by big data.

Applications and software-defined infrastructures will likely highlight future, hopefully more successful, data consolidation projects.

In a recent survey, the majority of mobile consumers said they would switch companies for a more accessible mobile channel.

The industry's absence from a pair of recent rankings serve as a reminder that in order to attract the best IT talent, insurers need to appear open to innovation and experimentation.