Japan's Taiyo Life Insurance Implements IBM for Cloud Initiative

The Japan-based insurer, along with its technology partner T&D Information Systems, is also working on an outsourcing program.

Taiyo Life Insurance (Tokyo) and its technology partner T&D Information Systems (Saitama City, Japan) have implemented IBM (Armonk, N.Y.) Smart Business Desktop to virtualize its client environment on servers.

The desktop cloud is used for 1,500 admin-focused PCs, with the goal to reduce the amount of updating and increase security, according to the companies. It went live July 20.

"The use of the desktop cloud environment provides automatic updates to all related client environments when one application adds a new function; and will eliminate the use of update releases for all the sites and a separate configuration process on each PC," the companies say in a statement. "The desktop cloud environment will only require an update on the virtual desktop environment via the server, and the data will be managed over the secure data center servers and no longer stored on the client side. By utilizing the desktop cloud environment, Taiyo Life Insurance has experienced even stronger security."

Taiyo and T&D established a process in May to outsource some system development operations to Dalian, China. The goals of that initiative were to enhance development capability, streamline system development and reduce cost. The outsourcing program also depended on a desktop cloud environment. Taiyo and T&D created it at Taiyo's data center in Japan.

Nathan Golia is senior editor of Insurance & Technology. He joined the publication in 2010 as associate editor and covers all aspects of the nexus between insurance and information technology, including mobility, distribution, core systems, customer interaction, and risk ... View Full Bio