Gavin Ritchie
IT Director
Gavin spent his previous career in software development and database design in a variety of employed and independent roles. Development activities for Life Insurance systems proved a launching pad to a collaboration with Stephen Richards, and the Longevitas application suite was born. Alongside steering the IT function, Gavin is the primary developer for database, Java and web-related technologies.
Articles written by Gavin Ritchie
Modelling and the maple leaf
We get a lot of interest in our software from Canada. We don't know specifically why this might be — despite that fact that two of our founders are Scottish, we are not aware of any distant relatives still panning for gold out there.
Parallel processing
A colleague of mine once described parallel processing as the "work of the devil". I don't know if I'd go quite this far — this statement was made in the early nineties, when technology was that little bit less advanced than it is today.
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Not all security strategies need be as dramatic as those proposed by Mission Impossible, but anyone offering SaaS needs to ensure data is accessible by only authorised users.
Zip codes
Following a previous entry on postcodes, we have been asked how US zip codes can be used for mortality modelling.
Being open to open source
There remains some residual apprehension around open source software (OSS), despite the fact it is increasingly widely adopted.
What's in a name?
We have already mentioned the problem of duplication in pension schemes and annuities, and as an issue we encounter frequently it is worth talking a little about some technology that can be used to counter the problem.
SaaS - Software as a service
According to technology analysts Gartner, one quarter of new business software will be delivered as a service by 2011.