Many were custom-built years ago by in-house development teams and still run on mainframe systems with "green-screen" terminal interfaces.

However, as carriers begin to explore ways to open up these systems-and make applications and data available to end-users across the enterprise-they are finding themselves at a crossroads, faced with the dilemma of whether to modernize or to replace core policy administration systems.

Then, there's the middle road taken by The Hartford Insurance Cos., which has headquarters in Hartford, Conn. The company is pursuing simultaneous modernization and replacement strategies to upgrade mainframe-based policy administration systems, some up to four decades old, with newer applications that support SOA (service-oriented architecture).

The promise of SOA, many in the industry agree, is that carriers can use it to break down systems into standardized, interchangeable components or services that can be assembled or dissembled as business processes demand.