Transition to Cloud Computing

[rayholt]

My background is in IT and web development. When I started in insurance I was working with a broker that was accustomed to life as an agent before computers existed. I always found the modern ways of doing the tasks he wanted to accomplish.

Yes, cloud computing is risky at times because I have been locked out of my Google Apps account for an extended amount of time trying desperately to get support (which doesn't seem to exist outside of a community forum monitored by some Google employees). I still use Google Apps however because it's seamless with doing everything I need to do. Not transitioning to the cloud may be like keeping your money under the mattress.

I can't agree more with "my work is to run my business, not my IT demands". As much as I enjoy my career of providing tech support at a fee, I find it far more satisfying to set someone up with a system that they will not have to manage and can just focus on what they do best: selling policies and building relationships.

So what I have done is setup Google Apps for my insurance business and have it as an account on my Android phone. It doesn't have to be an @gmail, Google Apps accounts work too! So JohnDoe@MyAgency.com will work. This allows me to easily synchronize between my computer and phone. Plus I can hop on any computer and have access to my email, calendar, and contacts.

I have daily agendas emailed to me at 6:00am every morning that I can see on my phone. These appointments in my calendar have the location already in. So anytime I'm on the road I can see my appointment on my phone, click on the location and bring up Google Maps to navigate me there or call the person that I'm meeting with, etc.

I'm also using Google Voice because this will allow me to have an assistant take calls whenever I'm not available. You can also categorize contacts to directly ring certain people. So if you hire an additional agent you can make it where there contacts go straight to them, yours goes straight to you, and they rest can go to you or your assistant or whoever is available.

When you download Google Voice onto your Android phone you can easily switch back and forth between whatever number you want to make and receive calls. So I can be in the office or out at the lake and I'm always calling from the same number.

I also have quote requests sent to my email which I can read on my phone. So whenever I get one, wherever I am, I can easily contact them back promptly to ask them some questions and just start the relationship building.

I also use Dropbox on my computer and phone. Not as a backup solution, but to keep files synced between. I know this can be done with Google Docs, but sometimes I use Word Docs and import them to Google Docs it messes up the formatting anytime I make changes.

For computer backup I use NovaBACKUP because it performs pretty much every type of backup possible. I have it setup to my Amazon S3 account. If you are concerned about the privacy of the data you are backing up (client information), then this is a good solution since the backup files are encrypted and can't be read by another computer. Amazon S3 is cheap and I used the coupon code 1UV1AY8YE to get 20% off NovaBACKUP.

To keep track of all the little ideas I have I use Evernote. It's just a quick way to jot down some marketing ideas or if I met someone what I'd like to discuss with them the next time we talk. Also, if I'm reading through articles online and like what I see I just copy the link in Evernote instead of bookmarking it, this way it's with me wherever I go. I know that Google can probably sync bookmarks but I just haven't set that up yet.

The technology I use is pretty much on autopilot so I don't really even think about it. While typing this I had to make sure I was remembering some of the parts of this well-tuned machine. This is not the entirety of what I use, but the main pieces that will get any agent up and running.

 

[Robert Barney]

I find this funny, because if someone REALLY wanted to break in and change all the CL rates, they could. Easily, I'm sure. But they don't want to, so you're safe.

The fact is, no data is safe. There is always a way to get to it if that's the end goal.

The CL rates, as you call them, are maintained on a computer "off line". They are then transferred to a Zip Drive (old technology rules), then transferred from the zip drive to a machine connected to the web and then uploaded to the web.

Easy Peasy.

If someone fiddles with the data files on the web, the impact would be dramatically wrong quotes and we would know almost immediately that something had screwed up.

Solution?

Transfer the rates from the non-Internet machine, by Zip Drive, to the Internet based machine, and upload and replace the screwed up files.

Did I mention our updates are kept on 7 different servers with about 5 different IP's.

And yes, I manually upload each one so screwed up files on one machine, do not automatically get transferred to the others.

And did I mention we use our own compression software, you can't uncork our compressed files with Winzip.

And I would invite you to go ahead and open up one of our rate.d0? files, where the rates are stored, and see if you can make any sense of it. Even that gives me a problem.

Of course any suggestions from anyone on how to improve the security of this system are welcome.

I freely admit that we are vulnerable to nuclear attack, but our files are so widely distributed among our staff in the U.S. and Canada, and multiple servers, that I have not been losing any sleep.

As to all these web outages:

Amazon.com apologizes for multi-day cloud computing outage | Technology | Los Angeles Times

I thought I would play Amazon's theme song for the occasion:



That little girl could sing.

 

[ksigmtsu]

reverse engineering a compression algorithm isn't impossible but it's most definately harder than most people would want to attempt.

Especially if you have compiled code in C++, which I know you do, its so hard to reverse engineer a C program and try to "uncompile" it that it is faster to write it from scratch.

I know some things that could corrupt the data and ways to do that, however I don't see any point in sharing those because its not a great idea to give people ideas about how they could do things like that.

I will say one of the ways you could further improve security would be in output validation during the screen write phase, it could be compared vs a online output if the output was available (internet access) as a safeguard against external attack.

However, it'd slow it down to do that, and I'm of the opinion that your software is secure enough.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

It's called "Planned Obsolescence". Things arrive at market with a lifespan already decided. I bought my first HP Laserjet in 1990 and paid $1500 for it. Since then I've bought two HP laptops and at least 8 HP printers. I bought an HP 3055 all-in-one in 2006 and it worked great. When Vista came out, and then Windows 7, HP decided they were not going to provide fully functional drivers. The result is that the machine won't scan unless you're using Win XP. I called HP about it and got the standard corporate double talk.

Brother, on the other hand, was quick to deliver fully functional drivers for Vista and W7. They have been taking long-time HP customers left and right. Go into a Staples and you will see HP printers and all-in-ones STILL not fully supporting W7. The sticker on the unit says "Windows 7 Ready"... meaning NOT fully functional.

One of the best things about the "cloud" computing era that we're in now, almost any program can be ran from almost any computer because cloud based software is compiled on the user and server computer on the fly in most cases. A lot of cloud apps are php/java, or some variation of a code that operates in that fashion, and because of the nature of how they work, the java is compiled on your computer as it runs, and the php is compiled on the server as it runs, and since computers are more powerful now it's not a problem at all to do things that way.

15 years ago it wouldn't have worked to try to compile software on a 386 while it ran, it would have sat there looking stupid with all 640k of memory wondering what the hell you were thinking.

Now you can address 16000 times that in memory with a processor running about 100 times faster with multiple cores and multiple processes happening simultaneously.

Its like comparing a tricycle to a space shuttle launch.

Software is written far less efficiently now, because its no longer necessary to be so perfect.

The cross platform love is just wonderful. There is no reason you have to even use windows anymore, no company can just capture and dominate the market because they fix it so no one else can use their product.

 

[Robert Barney]

reverse engineering a compression algorithm isn't impossible but it's most definately harder than most people would want to attempt.

I don't disagree, but even if you could reverse engineer the compression software it would only mean that you would be able to decompress the compressed file after the compressed file is received. You would still have to corrupt the data on the users computer. As each of my customers have the software on there own machines, you have a long list of equipment to hack, even if you knew who they were.

Having decompressed the software, as I said, our data structure is purposely difficult to sort out. Take a look at a rate.d0? file, and see if you can make sense out of it. I can't.

As far as web quoting goes, the date files stored on servers and they are not compressed, but difficult to sort out, as O mentioned. If you did modify them, as I said before, the results would be absurd. The minute that we are confronted by absurd results, we would know that there is file damage and we would simply replace the damaged files.

Changes to the files, which occur routinely, mean I rebuild the files. Whatever hacking occurred with the old file, would be replaced by the new file, and the hacking done before would have to be repeated. The files are not stagnant.

And what would be the point of attacking the data files? To quote a product higher or lower than it actually is? And what useful purpose would that serve, other than to damage our reputation for security?

Note that damaged files occur for other reasons outside our control (hardware failures) and we have encountered the scenario before. As I said, results become absurd and simple file replacement fixes the problem.

Also note that our data files are so small that replacement is virtually instantaneous. For example, the 20 year rate file, which stores all the 20 year rates for over 300 product entries, is 1.3 meg, tiny by today's standards (that's also one of the reasons why our software is so darn fast).

To affect the windows version of our software, the decompressed files would have to be recompressed, and the check sums properly engineered to ensure that our decompression software, in windows, would happily process it. The compressed files would have to replace the compressed files on multiple servers, in order for our subscribers to get the affected files.

Getting my drift yet? All this to say it's a much bigger mountain to climb than you may first imagine. I wouldn't want to climb it.

Especially if you have compiled code in C++, which I know you do, its so hard to reverse engineer a C program and try to "uncompile" it that it is faster to write it from scratch.

You are quite correct, our software programs are distributed ONLY in compiled form.

I know some things that could corrupt the data and ways to do that, however I don't see any point in sharing those because its not a great idea to give people ideas about how they could do things like that.

I don't disagree, but for a hack to be "meaningful", it would have to be strategic. If all the hack is doing is corrupting the file, then it would be obviously hacked and replacement would take place.

I will say one of the ways you could further improve security would be in output validation during the screen write phase, it could be compared vs a online output if the output was available (internet access) as a safeguard against external attack.

I am uncertain of the mechanics of that.

However, it'd slow it down to do that, and I'm of the opinion that your software is secure enough.

On that point we are in complete agreement.

 

[WinoBlues]

I also use apps, voice and an android. I like that everything syncs.

I do not care for the Google contacts seems like outlooks is easier to me. Do you have an alternative? Something you can add links to?

>>I know that Google can probably sync bookmarks but I just haven't set that up yet.

I use ChromeMarks as my bookmarks on my Evo. Works great. I have my bookmarks bar built with the way I like it on Chrome and it is sync'd on my phone.

My background is in IT and web development. When I started in insurance I was working with a broker that was accustomed to life as an agent before computers existed. I always found the modern ways of doing the tasks he wanted to accomplish.

Yes, cloud computing is risky at times because I have been locked out of my Google Apps account for an extended amount of time trying desperately to get support (which doesn't seem to exist outside of a community forum monitored by some Google employees). I still use Google Apps however because it's seamless with doing everything I need to do. Not transitioning to the cloud may be like keeping your money under the mattress.

I can't agree more with "my work is to run my business, not my IT demands". As much as I enjoy my career of providing tech support at a fee, I find it far more satisfying to set someone up with a system that they will not have to manage and can just focus on what they do best: selling policies and building relationships.

So what I have done is setup Google Apps for my insurance business and have it as an account on my Android phone. It doesn't have to be an @gmail, Google Apps accounts work too! So JohnDoe@MyAgency.com will work. This allows me to easily synchronize between my computer and phone. Plus I can hop on any computer and have access to my email, calendar, and contacts.

I have daily agendas emailed to me at 6:00am every morning that I can see on my phone. These appointments in my calendar have the location already in. So anytime I'm on the road I can see my appointment on my phone, click on the location and bring up Google Maps to navigate me there or call the person that I'm meeting with, etc.

I'm also using Google Voice because this will allow me to have an assistant take calls whenever I'm not available. You can also categorize contacts to directly ring certain people. So if you hire an additional agent you can make it where there contacts go straight to them, yours goes straight to you, and they rest can go to you or your assistant or whoever is available.

When you download Google Voice onto your Android phone you can easily switch back and forth between whatever number you want to make and receive calls. So I can be in the office or out at the lake and I'm always calling from the same number.

I also have quote requests sent to my email which I can read on my phone. So whenever I get one, wherever I am, I can easily contact them back promptly to ask them some questions and just start the relationship building.

I also use Dropbox on my computer and phone. Not as a backup solution, but to keep files synced between. I know this can be done with Google Docs, but sometimes I use Word Docs and import them to Google Docs it messes up the formatting anytime I make changes.

For computer backup I use NovaBACKUP because it performs pretty much every type of backup possible. I have it setup to my Amazon S3 account. If you are concerned about the privacy of the data you are backing up (client information), then this is a good solution since the backup files are encrypted and can't be read by another computer. Amazon S3 is cheap and I used the coupon code 1UV1AY8YE to get 20% off NovaBACKUP.

To keep track of all the little ideas I have I use Evernote. It's just a quick way to jot down some marketing ideas or if I met someone what I'd like to discuss with them the next time we talk. Also, if I'm reading through articles online and like what I see I just copy the link in Evernote instead of bookmarking it, this way it's with me wherever I go. I know that Google can probably sync bookmarks but I just haven't set that up yet.

The technology I use is pretty much on autopilot so I don't really even think about it. While typing this I had to make sure I was remembering some of the parts of this well-tuned machine. This is not the entirety of what I use, but the main pieces that will get any agent up and running.

 

[GreenSky]

I like eggs.

Rick

 

[djs]

Is that green eggs? And maybe some ham?

 

[WinoBlues]

I like eggs.

Rick

I heard that. With chorizo?

 

[GreenSky]

I heard that. With chorizo?

Even more better. Chiliquilles con chorizo (with cheese). About 10,000 calories, 1,000 grams of fat, and a ton of carbs.

All 3 major food groups.

Rick

 

[rayholt]

I do not care for the Google contacts seems like outlooks is easier to me. Do you have an alternative? Something you can add links to?

I was using Outlooks Business Contact Manager for awhile and it seemed to work pretty good. It was just frustrating when it wouldn't load or there was some problem with the software and you had to reinstall the add-on and create a new database and all that head ache that goes along with that. Somehow I just naturally made the transition into using Google's contacts because I manage contacts mainly through the computer and not my phone.

I really liked the way HTC had tied into Google's contacts and the way they let you manage them with your phone. I get frustrated with how Motorola does it. So part of that depends on your phone. You have the EVO, so you should be able to have your favorites and everything grouped well. When I had an HTC phone I would have a folder called prospects, in which I would assign any prospect. So when I was sitting around and not sure who to call I could simply go to that folder and just start making some calls to whoever was on the list.

One thing I really liked is that I can enter the contact through Google Apps, save the person's name, email, address, their website, or any other piece of information I wanted. I could click save and run out the door and then call them because they are automatically sync'd pretty much instantly.

What do you mean by add links to? You should have the option of defining their website, profile, etc. Maybe not from your phone, but online - but it will still appear on your phone.