We know the value of data standards in our business. In a prior post, I emphasized the need for cloud providers to embrace ACORD standards. But there is also a need for standards that enable cloud interoperability. We do not have a single insurance industry cloud. I won't go into history but it could have be done in the past and it may be done in the future. Regardless, the idea of interoperability is getting serious attention from the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Vint Cerf, the father of the internet via his role in developing the TCP/IP protocol, is warning that cloud computing is leading to new islands of data. “Each cloud thinks it is the only cloud in the world,” says Cerf.
If you've lodged a mass of data in the cloud belonging to provider A, and want to move it to provider B, you're trapped. There are no agreed data standards for porting, nor for the metadata used for access control. It's not that there aren't potentially usable standards out there, just that the industry isn't rushing to implement any.
These days Cerf is Chief Internet Evangelist at Google. Google runs cloud services, as do Amazon, IBM, Microsoft and a growing number of providers. I believe Cerf is taking the right line in encouraging the industry to enable more portability.
At ACORD we've found that the adoption of standards grows business opportunities for everybody. It's tempting to build a wall around a proprietary area and hold your customers hostage, but ultimately it's a self-defeating strategy. That's a practice that only makes customers determined to escape and spurs them to find workarounds.
I'd guess that unless cloud providers give in to the inevitable need for standards, we'll see neutral, translator clouds emerging. These neutrals will undertake to suck any data you like from any cloud and spit it into another. One of these neutrals will do the job so well that customers will decide not to complete the process, and leave their data with the intermediary. This is how great new businesses are born. I'd be surprised if Google didn't already have well-advanced plans to offer this kind of service. Remember: you read it here first.
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