Cross-Ocean Clouds Are Gaining IT Favor

AIG Edison and others say cloud benefits outweigh latency issues even when apps are hosted on the other side of the globe.

Just over a year ago, Tohru Futami came to the conclusion that AIG Edison Life Insurance Co. needed to upgrade its core applications.

The Tokyo-based insurer's systems were seven years old and often didn't let the back office and the sales staff share information in a timely manner. Furthermore, some of the company's processes were still paper-based.

The primary options were to rewrite the applications or move to the cloud and run hosted software, said Futami, former CIO and managing director at AIG Edison, which was acquired by Prudential Financial Inc. last month.

Just over a year ago, Tohru Futami came to the conclusion that AIG Edison Life Insurance Co. needed to upgrade its core applications.

The Tokyo-based insurer's systems were seven years old and often didn't let the back office and the sales staff share information in a timely manner. Furthermore, some of the company's processes were still paper-based.

The primary options were to rewrite the applications or move to the cloud and run hosted software, said Futami, former CIO and managing director at AIG Edison, which was acquired by Prudential Financial Inc. last month.

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