P&C Insurers Are Breaking Free With Open-Source in Months, Not Years
Your traditional PAS vendor just announced on-premise support is ending. You didn’t ask for this migration timeline. You didn’t budget for it. But now you’re being forced to move to their cloud, on their schedule, at their price, with no alternative. This isn’t modernization. It’s a lock-in strategy disguised as progress. And P&C insurers are done playing along.
The Cloud Mandate You Didn’t Ask For
If you’re running a self-managed PAS from a traditional vendor, you’ve likely received the memo: on-premise is going away. According to Guidewire’s own coverage of their 2025 Connections conference, insurers like LocalTapiola are now racing to migrate because of “the announced end of support for on-premises environments” (Guidewire, 2025).
Capgemini’s 2025 cloud migration guide puts it even more bluntly:
“Self-managed Guidewire products will only include technical patches going forward, and product support will eventually discontinue. It is not a matter of if you’ll be updating your core system to the cloud, it’s a matter of when.”
— Capgemini, “Guidewire Cloud Migration” (2025)
Let that sink in. Your current PAS, the one you’ve spent years customizing, integrating, and optimizing, is being reduced to patch-only status. No new features. No enhancements. Just maintenance mode until you comply with the migration mandate.
This isn’t a technology decision. It’s a business model decision, made by your vendor, for your vendor.
What They Gain vs. What You Lose
Follow the money. Guidewire’s subscription revenue grew 29% year-over-year while license revenue dropped 12% in Q4 2024 (AINvest, 2025). Their Annual Recurring Revenue hit $960 million in 2025 and is projected to exceed $1 billion (AINvest, 2025). That’s not innovation driving growth. That’s mandatory cloud migration converting one-time license customers into perpetual subscribers.
What your vendor gains:
- Predictable recurring revenue locked to their infrastructure
- Complete control over your upgrade cycle and feature releases
- A customer who can’t leave without massive disruption
What you lose:
- The ability to deploy on your terms
- Leverage in the relationship
- Any realistic path to exit
The traditional closed-source PAS model always gave vendors this power. The cloud mandate just removes any pretense. You never owned the software. You rented it. And now the landlord is raising the rent while eliminating your other housing options.
The “Too Hard to Switch” Trap
Here’s what keeps CIOs stuck: the belief that switching core systems is an 18-24 month odyssey that will consume your entire IT budget and career capital. Traditional PAS vendors have made this true by design. Complex implementations, proprietary architectures, and deliberate integration friction aren’t bugs. They’re features that keep you captive.
Think about what you’ve built around your current PAS: the claims system integrations, the billing workflows, the agency portal connections, the underwriting rules your team has refined over years of real-world use. The thought of rebuilding all of that feels impossible. That’s exactly how your traditional PAS vendor wants you to feel.
Endava’s 2024 analysis confirms the pressure: “Although Guidewire has committed to supporting InsuranceSuite v10 in the immediate short term, standard support will eventually be phased out” (Endava, 2024). So your choices appear to be: migrate to their cloud on their timeline, or watch your system become unsupported.
It’s the insurance technology equivalent of “we’ve always done it this way,” except this time, “this way” benefits your traditional PAS vendor, not your policyholders.
But that’s a false binary. The “too hard to switch” narrative serves traditional PAS vendors, not insurers. It’s the story they need you to believe to justify the migration mandate.