Today marks my first Connections as Guidewire CEO. I’ve spent the last 90 days getting to know the industry, our customers, and Guidewire. It has been a lot of fun; I am learning a lot and expect I'll still be learning a lot a year from now. But after 90 days my first take is just that I feel very privileged to have the opportunity to serve this industry. Inspired by guest speaker climber Alex Honnold’s story, our Connections theme is “mastering our craft”. Alex has been a personal hero of mine long before he free soloed El Capitan, as I used to dream of becoming a great Yosemite rock climber. His accomplishments and approach are a personal inspiration for me, and I hope all of us. Our customers are seeking to master their craft in light of increased expectations and competitive pressure. We are seeking to master our craft to ensure their success. It’s a privilege to stand on stage today and share all the hard work our development teams are doing to help our customers be successful by simplifying IT; making smarter, faster decisions; and increasing business and IT agility.
In continuing our commitment to Guidewire Cloud, we’re improving the Guidewire Cloud Platform through automation, tooling, frameworks, and common cloud services. This allows our customers to focus their IT resources on business value generating activities and functions and leave the common requirements and effort to us.
Integration-related expense has been a common feedback topic in the many discussions I've had since joining, and while we have done a lot to address it, I'm very excited about the work we are doing to reduce it. Our InsuranceNow team is reducing implementation time and expense by 30-50% with a new reference implementation called InsuranceNow GO. The team also released a new version of InsuranceNow with a new user experience enhancing workflow and navigation. Our product team continues to build out REST APIs across the policy and claims lifecycle, decreasing the time and cost of integrating our platform with third party systems. This API-first approach enables increased use of cloud-native services on Guidewire Cloud. Also, our DevConnect developer platform enables partners and customers to create installable add-ons that are available through Guidewire Marketplace. We have six new Ready for Guidewire add-ons now available, from Advanced Remarketing Services, Livegenic, Mirror Technologies, Ontellus, TruePic, and WeGoLook. I think that this new approach to packaged DevConnect based application integration has the potential to completely change our approach to integration and significantly reduce the expense and effort related to deploying and maintaining Guidewire.
Guidewire Data Platform is a new P&C Insurance-specific data repository and factory that continuously collects data from internal and external sources, enables insurers to leverage up-to-the-minute information to make smarter, faster decisions.
Marina Grebenkova, Vice President of Product Management for Guidewire Cyence Risk Analytics, joined me on stage to talk about our latest products and vision. Cyence for Small Business, supported by Guidewire Data Platform, is an on-demand risk-assessment engine that combines internet-scale data collection, and P&C-specific AI and modeling, enabling customers to quickly understand and underwrite specific risks. Cyence for Small Business enables customers to re-examine current underwriting processes, and usher in a new era we call “Smart Underwriting”.
We unveiled a series of new and improved capabilities to improve agility, with increased automation and business-friendly configuration. Advanced Product Designer (APD) is a low-code configuration tool that enables insurers to rapidly design, simulate, and deploy a new insurance product in PolicyCenter. Next, Guidewire Jutro is a new digital experience framework for designing and developing Guidewire Digital apps rapidly. Jutro enables fast, automated deployment of consistent user experiences through metadata-driven configuration and a low-code approach. Jutro in Polish means “tomorrow” – a nod to our focus on innovation, and our incredible development team in Kraków
In an exciting main stage product-focused keynote, we pulled many of these concepts together to showcase the evolution of PolicyCenter Cloud. Diego Devalle, Global Head of Products and Engineering, and Ray Kreisel, Chief Technology Officer, took us through a live, interactive demo of a visionary use case of rapid product design and delivery based on PolicyCenter Cloud. This new use case enables customers to introduce new products fast, and to test and learn in market. It marks a new chapter for Guidewire and is a significant expansion of the value of PolicyCenter Cloud.
Today Guidewire is recognized for our ability to help customers move their business from legacy core systems to a modern platform. But I think, as we think about the future, Guidewire will be known for the redefinition of a Property and Casualty (P&C) core system, to include all of the capabilities insurers require to stay competitive. I think that this Connections marks the start of our intention to deliver this vision.
I'm looking forward to meeting as many customers and partners as I can this week, and if you weren't able to join us this year, I hope that this post helps get you up to speed on the news we announced today.