Vegas-style WWE wrestling as is now seen on TV. These were old fellas, who probably worked the mines when they weren’t dressed in leotards rolling around an unused school gym. My favorite wrestler went by the moniker Big Daddy, a brick wall of a Yorkshire man whose real name was Shirley Crabtree.
The reason for this misty eyed trip down memory lane is that Big Daddy had a chant he used to egg on the crowd and to rile his faux-ponent. He’d get everyone to slow chant “Easy!, Easy!, Easy!, Easy!” (YouTube now gives you the unique opportunity to share in my childhood.) As a result of this I now have a recurring Pavlovian response when I think about Guidewire Live apps. Of all the things written and talked about Live to date, one of the most understated and underappreciated aspects is that it is so ridiculously easy to get started and own, it really is.
For those of us who work at Guidewire, those that have bought a Guidewire product, and those that partner with us, there was always an assumption that there must be some collective benefit of all being on the same datamodel and running the same technology platform, i.e., being part of the community.
To be totally transparent, we didn’t build the common data model with Guidewire Live in mind. It was the natural outcome of being a true software product company focused on a single industry. We built the common data model because it was a critical ingredient in the legacy replacement journey: to ensure that you, our customers, had a sustainable long term upgrade path. Guidewire Live was just a happy accident, an unexpected benefit – the reward for eating your vegetables, if you will.
This common platform protects you from data integration purgatory exacerbated by heavily customized and bespoke systems. Eliminating the data extraction and transformation hurdle enables app development to be cost effective. It enables the scaling up of production and innovation. It starts to make things easy.
"Data transfer; with a simple batch job that we provide, you are able to transmit raw ‘untransformed’ data to us – easy!"
"The apps are hosted, so you don’t have to install, maintain fixes, or ever upgrade – easy!"
"Instant-On, if you want more apps, or even to turn one off, just do it – easy!"
If you are skeptical of our claims, we wouldn’t blame you. You’ve probably heard it all before. It seems like every vendor out there says that their solutions are easy to get started with: “all you have to do is ‘send us your data’”, as if your team’s labor was worth nothing; not to mention the footnote that data provided must conform to a ‘specific format’ which is the super-secret-software-sales term for a data integration or ETL project. Conversely, Live apps are truly instant-on – the connectivity and transformations and integrations are all done, you didn’t have to do mappings in the first place and you’ll never have to in the future – easiest!
So while many people draw an analogy between Live apps and the iPhone, to me Guidewire Live is like an old wrestler from Yorkshire – Easy! Easy! Easy!