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OpenQuote 1.0 Released PDF Print E-mail

The OpenQuote team are proud to announce the release of OpenQuote Version 1.0, the open source solution for the insurance industry.

OpenQuote Logo

For those who are new to OpenQuote, the system itself is fairly simple to describe:

OpenQuote is designed to web enable your insurance product quotations.  Whether you are an insurer or a broker, whether selling direct or via an agent, OpenQuote can help you.

Version 1.0 marks a major milestone for the project, being the first full stable release; clearly demonstrating how quickly the system's development is progressing.  The release also shows how effective open source projects are at delivering functionality that the users actually required, collaboration with CityNet, successful brokers based in the heart of London’s insurance district, has not only helped focus and deliver this release, but is also helping to shape future releases.  OpenQuote is providing key functionality that can really benefit the business.

 

OpenQuote 1.0 Key Features

Online Quotations - For each product OpenQuote takes the proposer through a product (aka scheme) specific process of preparing a quotation:

  • The proposer fills in an on-line proposal form;
  • A rules driven rating and referral process is run, and the premium is presented;
  • Quotation documents may be generated (as a PDF);
  • Payment schedules may be calculated, and;
  • Payment information collected.
  • Proposers may save quotations and return at a later time to accept a quote.
  • Notification emails are sent to the broker (or product owner) informing them of each quotation offered, accepted and referred. These emails include all the information the broker might need in order to progress the business.
  • On a low specification PC acting as an OpenQuote server, the system can be expected to support 2000 quotes per hour.

Product Development - OpenQuote has a flexible and powerful approach to defining products or schemes:

  • Products are built and tested entirely on-line. This includes the questions to be asked during the proposal, the rating and referral rules, payment rules, tax rules, screens and document layouts.
  • Product hierarchies allow one product to inherit some, or all, of its features (questions, rules, documents and screens) from another product.
  • There is no limit to the depth of the product hierarchy.
  • A full history product changes is kept.
  • Product development is "Zero-turnaround", in other words any change to screens, rating rules, documents etc. is immediately available for testing. There is no build step.
  • Products can be moved easily into production. There is no need to stop and start servers or undertake complex deployment processes.

OpenQuote 1.0 Technology

In technology terms, OpenQuote is a Java Enterprise Edition application. It has been built on a technology stack which the OpenQuote team believe represents best-of-breed Open Source technologies; these including JBoss (application server), Alfresco (content management), Drools (rules engine), Hibernate (data persistence) and MySQL (database).

Internally, the system is made up of 4 layers: core, commercial, insurance, and OpenQuote itself. Each level extends its predecessor adding domain specific services and models. The system as a whole is highly service oriented in order to provide clear partitioning between functional areas; this improves ease of development and improves the likelihood of reuse.

Cost of Ownership

OpenQuote is an open source product, this means the OpenQuote user can chose how they manage the running costs.  The software itself is free, however it will need to be hosted on a suitable server and the insurance products requiring on-line quotations will need to be configured in OpenQuote.  These tasks can be done in-house (by the user) so costs are internalised, or a third party can be used to provide assistance in these areas. 

If a company has the technical expertise and time to support OpenQuote in-house, then they may feel that is the route to take.  With free community support available from the OpenQuote website this is a really viable option.

If a company feels they do not have the expertise or time available to support the running of OpenQuote themselves, Applied Industrial Logic - the creators of OpenQuote - offer commercial support services, including hosting and product development.  Full pricing details can be found on their support page.

What next for OpenQuote?

Development continues to move the system forward, with many new features and functionality planned for both versions 1.1 (currently in development) and version 2.0 (currently in planning).  Version 1.1 of OpenQuote builds on the current release by improving the existing feature set, whilst Version 2.0 will deliver more sophisticated broker communication functionality as well as more comprehensive document suite, including policy schedule and bordereau production.

Useful Links:

OpenQuote Project Home Page

Applied Industrial Logic Support

 

Applied Industrial Logic can be contacted by email at contact@appliedindustriallogic.com or by filling in a form on our contacts page.

 

OpenQuote 1.0
New! OpenQuote 1
Why Open Source
Why Open Source? PDF Print E-mail

Open source software has many benefits over commercial software to both the user and the developer, when AIL was investigating how to distribute OpenQuote, we quickly realised that open source offered the best route.

Benefits

Access: The first benefit that open source delivers is ease of access for the user, because it is freely distributed anyone who is interested can download it, try it and use it. For the potential user this means no hard sales push, for AIL it means we do not have to worry about the resources required for that first stage in the sales process.

Licence: OSI (OpenSource.org) approved open source licences are not only free to use, but also common place in most organisations - even though some may not realise they are using open source software already! This not only means that legal work regarding the licence is kept to a minimum (from both AIL's perspective and the users), but it also means a precedance for using software at the company on such terms has probably been set already, so resistance to it is minimised.

Cost: To the user, cost of using the software is determined much more by the client than the developer, the user can choose if they pay the developer for support or not. In AIL's case we do offer commercial services around OpenQuote, these services are designed to help both users who do not have the infrastructure to host or configure OpenQuote themselves, and users that feel commercial support would be a practical safety net, however this is not compulsory. For AIL this means we can get a much clearer picture on what levels of support are required, and for who. If a company is comfortable supporting themselves, then AIL doesn't need to know anything about them and they don't need to worry about paying for unnecessary support licences.

Project Sposorship: If a company has the resources it can take part in the development of OpenQuote, contributing resources and helping to shape the product, this way specific areas of the system important to that user can be focused on without disrupting the existing development plan. Resources can take the form of developers, business analysts, product designers, User Interface expertise and so on. Alternatively a company can engage AIL to provide these resources for them. This hands on involvement by users is actively encouraged by the OpenQuote project, the more involvement the user community has in development, the better OpenQuote becomes.

Availability: Open source means the code is freely available, this adds a level of security to the software that few commercial products can offer. Users can if they wish hold a copy of OpenQuote's program code themselves, so should anything happen to the project in the future, they can continue to maintain the software themselves.

Complementary Projects: There are many open source projects out there, covering many different areas. OpenQuote uses other open source software to complement and improve its own functionality. An example of this is OpenQuote's use of the Alfresco content management system; rather than reinventing the wheel and creating its own content management functionality (used to persist and edit products) OpenQuote integrates Alfresco, drastically reducing development effort. Another benefit is because both OpenQuote and Alfresco are open source, there are no licensing conflicts for us to deal with.

These are just a few of the reason why AIL choose to take OpenQuote down the open source path, for more information about open source and its implications please visit OpenSource.org.