Old business models are being turned upside-down by new cloud-based technologies. Hotels will never be the same after Airbnb arrived and the taxi industry as we've known it may not survive Lyft and Uber. Other industries are more resistant to the cloud. One example is insurance.

Not selling you, the consumer, insurance. That end of the business is covered. Big data is also revolutionizing how this most staid of industries is handling risk. But, managing the levers and gears of insurance IT on the cloud has been a slower process.

It's speeding up now. MetLife is working on improving both the process and economics for insurance product development[1] and improving underwriting and benefits delivery. They're not the only ones.

Socotra[2] -- creator of one of the first cloud-based, productized insurance core platforms, and backed by USAA[3], CrunchFund[4], Founders Fund[5], and numerous other venture capitalists -- is seeking to create a cloud platform for both domestic and international insurance companies.

Socotra claims its first-of-its-kind cloud-native system is enabling carriers to easily and efficiently manage complex interactions throughout the lifecycle of policies (whether single line, single state, or multi-line, multi-country). The Socotra platform's agility, flexibility, reliability, and modern design "offers carriers lower costs, faster product releases, and easy integration with future technologies".

This platform aims to be run across all areas of insurance operations: Policyholders, policies, claims, and insured assets. In short, everything an insurance company would need.

Its services are built on Tomcat[6], Docker[7], and Amazon Web Services (AWS)[8]. It's designed for companies to make the most of it for their own particular uses. It uses REpresentational State Transfer (REST)[9]

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