The consumer insurance industry may be one of the more reluctant industries to jump head-first into the cloud. Think about the current process of getting a home, renters, auto or life insurance policy through a traditional vendor. You might shop for quotes online, visit an agent in person, or have companies compete over your business.

Think about all the back-end computing that goes into running an insurance operation. Agents are always in the field assessing damages, administrative personnel is fielding customer inquiries while claims can be placed 24 hours a day.

Traditional IT systems become inefficient when expanded to this scale which is why the cloud model is starting to make more sense for insurance agencies that are looking to reduce costs and increase IT efficiency.

Tony Jacob, Managing Director of Worldwide Insurance at Microsoft says, “The reality today is that many insurers are held back by their legacy IT …