Cloud Integration Framework: The Right Tools for the Job

As any professional tradesperson, hobbyist, or home improvement DIYer will tell you, it’s essential to use the right tool for the job every time. Whether tackling a new project or making a minor repair, you can’t beat the satisfaction of completing a job with the proper tool — fast, easy, safely, and done right the first time.

The same goes for digital technology.

At this time of year, industry analysts and futurists are taking stock of 2021 and making predictions for tech trends in the year to come. For the digital enterprise, they’re touting the latest iterations on engaging user experiences, streamlined automation, composable business, and smarter decision-making with embedded analytics and AI. These capabilities are critical for P&C insurance operations, whether you’re introducing new products or producer channels, keeping pace with competitive market dynamics, improving service and efficiency, or responding to changing regulatory requirements. And at the center of all this is your core system of record — and integration with that core system.

Empowering developers is a key focus of Guidewire Cloud Platform. The Cloud Integration Framework, with expanded availability in Dobson, gives developers the right tools to connect Guidewire within your enterprise and across your ecosystem. Developers will feel right at home with our open, API-first, event-driven approach to integration. We estimate that the Cloud Integration Framework will reduce development effort for custom integrations by 50%, with even greater benefits for validated integrations available in the Guidewire Marketplace.

Integration Gateway* is an open framework for developing integration apps that bridge Guidewire APIs with external apps and services. It is based on Apache Camel, considered the "Swiss army knife" of enterprise integration for the hundreds of components available to connect any modern API or legacy protocol and orchestrate any interaction pattern. It’s mature and proven in enterprise environments and cloud deployments, it has an extensive user community of practitioners, and it’s among the most active Apache projects. Integration apps are each deployed alongside Guidewire Cloud apps, separating integrations from business logic. This offers more flexibility to enhance or change your solution, and it also enables easier cloud updates. Learn more about Integration Gateway by watching this Connections session.

InsuranceSuite Cloud API provides standard access to core system transactions and data for a broad range of claims and policy business functions. Developers can use these either directly from app clients or from within Integration Gateway apps. This RESTful system API is versioned and extensible for flexibility, and it supports the OpenAPI specification — the most popular API description format supported by many developer tools (see OAI). Watch this Connections session to learn how USAA uses the API on Guidewire Cloud, or explore the API at developer.guidewire.com.

Application Events* delivers messages in response to business events that occur throughout the claims and policy lifecycle, enabling event-driven apps and cross-application workflows triggered by InsuranceSuite. Each message includes metadata details about the business event according to the CloudEvents specification, together with a JSON data graph with the related claim, policy, or account information. App Events can be delivered to external systems in two different ways: via Webhooks or Integration Gateway. With App Events Webhooks, an administrator can configure event subscriptions without coding, enabling events to be delivered to a web endpoint. Alternatively, Integration Gateway provides a Camel component for App Events, so an integration app can subscribe to specific events and transform the message to call a specific API for an external service. Check out our Connections session about App Events to learn more.

For common integrations, however, you should conserve your integration development resources and instead look to Guidewire’s experience and expertise to deliver. With Dobson, we’ve introduced Guidewire Connect, a new subscription service to implement, support, and maintain select integrations. More than two dozen are already available, with additional integrations coming in every release. Watch this Connections session to learn more about Guidewire Connect.

Early customers and partners are already using the Cloud Integration Framework, and now it’s your turn. So strap on your toolbelt and get to work on that next project.

Dobson arrived on November 12, 2021. You can read the Dobson innovation blog and replay our “Ask Me Anything” cloud integration Connections session.

* Product feature available for Early Access customers

A version of this blog post also appears on developer.guidewire.com.