The Hartford Signs $500M Cloud Agreement With IBM

The Hartford signed a six-year, $500 million agreement to implement an IBM service model that includes a private cloud infrastructure. As part of its strategy to focus on its property and casualty, group benefits and mutual funds businesses, The Hartford will move to a private cloud-based infrastructure on IBM’s PureFlex System. IBM also will provide 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.

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.

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The Hartford could be at the beginning of a surge of insurers moving to a private cloud. At the beginning of the year industry experts went on the record saying 2014 would be the year of the cloud. But surveys that INN blogger Joe McKendrick has been involved with find that maybe 35 percent of companies are using private cloud in some capacity, and about 25 percent are using public cloud services for core enterprise applications. An 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.??

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“As The Hartford continues to execute on its strategic plan, we are making significant technology investments to increase operational effectiveness and improve our competitiveness,” said Andy Napoli, president of Consumer Markets and Enterprise Business Services at The Hartford. “The partnership with IBM will help The Hartford implement a strategic technology infrastructure that will provide us with greater agility and offer us more flexibility and transparency as we continue to grow our businesses.”