SSP Managed Services Features

Demand for Managed Service

Insurers are finding that the cost, & complexity, of hosting & running their insurance front/back-office solutions keep rising due to a variety of reasons. These include everything from domain management, expanding server loads, ongoing third party software updating, insurance front-back-office maintenance, security monitoring, data encryption, archiving & reliability.

In addition, the critical nature of backups & data protection (& restoration) must also be addressed. Combined with the need by the FSA to demonstrate a robust Disaster Recovery solution – what was once a low risk, installation of a few servers is now a high-risk, scalable on-demand essential business service.

As insurers expand their web presence & make more use of web-based applications & web services layer for integration, their infrastructure will become increasingly complicated & difficult to manage.

Strain on internal IT will intensify & the costs to manage internally will rise exponentially.

In short, growth & expansion means there is a greater need for insurers to outsource the management of their SSP core applications & infrastructure.

The advantages of SSP being the Managed Service Provider to Insurers:

• The simple fact that no-one else is better placed to look after our own insurer software solutions!
• It allows SSP to be proactive, rather than reactive, to service issues.
• It provides an infrastructure that most small to medium sized insurers would not be able to afford, through its shared infrastructure.
• It enables SSP to provide faster response timescales & higher service levels. (As SSP is responsible for everything there is no to & fro between service providers.)

SSP Offerings

We provide 4 different MSP offerings – each can vary according to business requirements.

The MSP solution is essentially cheaper if insurers can share some elements of the same infrastructure. SSP will never have insurers sharing the same SSP Application Server(s), but if the storage area network (SAN) can be shared then this would be the ideal entry level.

This is typically suitable for new start-ups, MGAs & tier 3 insurers. For larger insurers, this can be provided as a completely dedicated environment. For both options, this would be hosted by SSP at one of its hosting centres in Solihull & would provide a 48-hour disaster recovery service.

A further two options are provided through the provision of a hosted service & a third party Tier 3 hosting centre (can be upgraded to Tier 4 if required). These provide greater service levels, higher availability & faster response times with a 2-hour disaster recovery service.

With a broad spectrum of hosting solutions, SSP can provide a fully managed service that includes insurer dedicated application servers, all third party software (SQL, Oracle, DB2), & operating system management.

We can also provide application & technical support – including administrative control, database management & load-balancing.

This service will provide real peace of mind to insurers because the infrastructure will expand as they grow… & allow them to budget on fixed predictable costs.