About Guidewire Cloud
Two years ago, Guidewire started delivering its platform as a cloud service — Guidewire Cloud — that quickly became one of the most significant vertical industry cloud offerings in the marketplace. Guidewire Cloud is a purpose-built software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution based on Amazon Web Services (AWS) that is highly optimized for use with Guidewire InsuranceSuite core applications. It includes collections of cloud-native services, configuration tools, common data models, embedded analytics, and open APIs to support the integration and customization requirements of the world’s largest P&C insurers.
Hybrid Tenancy Model
Guidewire Cloud is based on a hybrid tenancy model, with our InsuranceSuite core fully componentized and deployed as single-tenant instances by customer. These are augmented by multitenant cloud services (Rating, Quoting, Rules, Product Models, etc.) that provide essential P&C functional capabilities that can be shared by many customers.
Strategic Driver for Cloud Tenancy Model
While tenancy decisions can be based on several factors, our strategy was driven by what best serves our customers’ needs. In other words, technical implementation specifics were secondary to what gets the job done for our customers. The architectural approach that delivers maximum customer value in the cloud was the deciding factor.
Cloud Transition That Leverages Customer Investments
Although most of our customers now agree that their future is in the cloud, this goal cannot be achieved at unlimited cost. They’ve made huge investments in enabling their core business around InsuranceSuite — an investment that they would like to preserve as much as possible. Our strategy enables them to achieve their cloud future while continuing to leverage their existing investments.
Value of Preserving InsuranceSuite Core
Guidewire InsuranceSuite is the market-leading core application platform and transactional system available in the P&C industry, covering all required use cases and mission-critical business processes. InsuranceSuite’s inherent modularity enabled Guidewire to take a more balanced approach to cloud transformation. Our customers’ needs demanded that we preserve this core as part of our transformation, and modern cloud technologies enabled us to do just that.
Hybrid Tenancy and Cost Efficiency
Our strategic focus was on providing our customers with an evolutionary transition to the cloud. But the hybrid tenancy architecture of Guidewire Cloud Platform (GWCP) was designed for cost efficiency as well. While comparing the cost of single vs. multitenant services was once fairly straightforward, the advent of containerized workloads orchestrated by Kubernetes changes the cost dynamic entirely. The hybrid tenancy model of GWCP offers greater overall value by providing a more optimum balance between speed of adoption, performance, operability, and cost. Benefits of the Hybrid Tenancy Approach
Guidewire’s hybrid tenancy model maximizes customer value where it matters most. It is single tenant for isolating the InsuranceSuite core, including business logic and customer data. It is multitenant for enabling shared P&C business and technical services as well as delivering new capabilities. And importantly, both leverage the same collection of cloud infrastructure services, configuration tooling, and continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) development pipeline. With Guidewire Cloud, we can continuously optimize this model and add multitenancy where it makes the most sense for our customers.
A version of this article appears in two parts on the Guidewire Engineering Team Medium blog here and here.