--- title: "Banff Raises the Bar – Again" url: "https://www.guidewire.com/resources/blog/technology/banff-raises-bar-again.md" language: "en" locale: "en" --- # Banff Raises the Bar – Again 2020-11-16T00:00:00Z I’m excited that the ski season is about to start where my family and I live in Northern California. I’m even more excited we’ve arrived at Banff, the second release in Guidewire’s bi-annual release cadence! In June we released Aspen, the most important release in Guidewire’s history, where we introduced Guidewire Cloud Platform and reimagined core platforms. ## Banff Raises the Bar – Again ### Chief Product Development Officer As Global Head of Product and Engineering at Guidewire Software, Diego Devalle drives design and strategy to implement engineering goals that address the needs of P&C insurers. ![Untitled](https://edge.sitecorecloud.io/guidewiresodb06-guidewire0f2e-productioncd91-5186/media/project/guidewire/guidewire/people/gw-blog-authorsp2thumbnails0004diego-devalle.jpeg?h=400&iar=0&w=400) ![Untitled](https://edge.sitecorecloud.io/guidewiresodb06-guidewire0f2e-productioncd91-5186/media/project/guidewire/guidewire/people/leadership-image-diego-devalle.png?h=540&iar=0&w=540) [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/diegodevalle/) Diego has held numerous executive positions overseeing technology and product development in the San Francisco Bay Area, India, and Europe. In his role at Guidewire, he drives design and strategy to implement engineering goals that address the needs of P&C insurers, such as the requirement to rapidly bring new and differentiating insurance products to market. Prior to Guidewire, Diego served as Vice President of Software Development and Vice President of Product and Engineering at SAP Labs. He began his enterprise software career at Baan in the Netherlands. "" [Facebook](http://) Diego Devalle “In every customer interaction, we are committed. On day one, Guidewire set out to serve the P&C industry, and years later, the development mindset is always to extend platform capabilities to make more possible.” —Diego Devalle "" [Twitter](http://) ### Technology I’m excited that the ski season is about to start where my family and I live in Northern California. I’m even more excited we’ve arrived at Banff, the second release in Guidewire’s bi-annual release cadence! In June we released Aspen, the most important release in Guidewire’s history, where we introduced Guidewire Cloud Platform and reimagined core platforms. Banff builds on that momentum and raises the bar—again. We’ve expanded the scale and scope of automation capabilities in Guidewire Cloud Platform; activated Guidewire Data Platform to enable a closed-loop approach to P&C analytics; introduced the new CloudDirect program to help self-managed InsuranceSuite customers upgrade directly to Guidewire Cloud; and delivered more and more cloud services while further enhancing capabilities like autogenerating digital APIs and experiences from metadata. In addition to unveiling Banff at [Connections Reimagined](https://success.guidewire.com/Connections-Reimagined-Register.html), we’re also excited to outline our vision for P&C claims. Over the last year, we’ve worked with a group of customers to explore some big questions. What if claims professionals could apply their skills and experience on the work that truly matters the most for customers? What if the new baseline for claims handling was automated claims, and the exception was adjuster-led claims—even for complex claims? This would lead to a faster, better experience for customers *and* make claims handling more efficient. Our innovation to make it happen, called Autopilot, promises to be a game-changer for the industry. Stay tuned for a blog in this series with details around our Autopilot vision. Returning to Banff... Much like a good ski run, you can’t experience everything in just one pass. Here are some additional capabilities in Banff that you’ll hear about at Connections: - Improve IT agility with automation enhancements to **Guidewire Cloud**. For example, building and provisioning new environments is reduced from 20 days to a few minutes. Additionally, centralized logging, monitoring, tracing, and alerts improve observability and make monitoring more efficient. - Augment and support your enterprise-wide data strategy with **Guidewire Data Platform**, now generally available worldwide for all Guidewire Cloud customers. **Cloud Data Access**, also generally available worldwide, provides secure access to all raw (un-curated) **Guidewire InsuranceSuite**data, including all intra-daily changes at a low latency. - Operationalize multiple analytics use cases into PolicyCenter and ClaimCenter in hours with the **Embedded Analytics Framework**that’s now available out-of-the-box for Guidewire Cloud customers. - Accelerate digital application deployment from months to weeks with **autogeneration of digital**APIs and UI directly from APD product model metadata combined with Jutro, Guidewire’s design system and UI framework for low-code UI development. - Empower the developer community at **developer.guidewire.com**, a hub where developers can engage and learn about the Guidewire platform and inspire innovation. - Grow a profitable general liability book for small business by leveraging behavioral, social, and environmental signals with the **Cyence for Small Business General Liability API**. I invite you to read more in our [press release](https://www.guidewire.com/about-us/news-and-events/press-releases/20201116/guidewire-announces-banff-release-and-vision-future) and, for an even closer look, attend [Connections Reimagined](https://connections.guidewire.com/event/f9ee5880-bbca-42b3-bab0-5086f11d41f8/summary?environment=P2&5S%2CM3%2Cf9ee5880-bbca-42b3-bab0-5086f11d41f8=) on Wednesday, November 18, and Thursday, November 19. You can register [here](https://success.guidewire.com/Connections-Reimagined-Register.html). We also have a series of Banff blogs planned over the next two weeks. Be sure to bookmark and check them out! ![Untitled](https://edge.sitecorecloud.io/guidewiresodb06-guidewire0f2e-productioncd91-5186/media/project/guidewire/guidewire/blog/thumbnails/homeblog20201116banfflogo.png?h=320&iar=0&w=560) [See More Articles](/en/resources/blog) ## "" [See All](/en/)