Calculating insurance premiums is a challenging task for insurers, as they often have limited information upon which to base risk assessments. The period a driver has held a license and their type of car have never been reliable indicators of safety; and reports insurers receive about accidents are subjective and may be written sometime after the event. With telematics, insurers can understand in real-time where the driver is, and help the driver improve his or her behaviour, says Fabio Sbianchi, CEO and founder at Octo Telematics. Octo is a major provider of telematics and data analytics solutions for the auto insurance industry, and a pioneer of the insurance telematics industry. "We help insurance companies move from static data to dynamic data," says Sbianchi, who spoke at the the Analytics Experience conference in Milan, a business technology conference organised by SAS.

Cloudera, Inc. (NYSE: CLDR), the modern platform for machine learning and analytics, optimized for the cloud, announced that Octo Telematics, a global leader in telematics for insurance companies, is introducing innovations for insurance by aggregating 186 billion miles of driving data from connected cars and using Cloudera Enterprise to predict and model driver risk. Utilizing machine learning and analytics on Cloudera Enterprise, the Octo Telematics platform can now deliver actionable insights and risk modeling to over 100 insurance companies worldwide that enables them to transform insurance including pricing, First Notice of Loss (FNOL), and claims insights. Octo Telematics' platform, built on Cloudera Enterprise, aggregates over 11 billion new data points from 5.4 million connected cars and sensors daily, creating one of the largest connected-car subscribed installed bases across the globe. Every relevant type of data--contextual data, driving data, behavioral data, and crash data--is utilized to forecast individual driving habits, improve crash notifications and response, evaluate crash dynamics, and detect fraud. "At Octo Telematics, we are using the power of IoT data analytics to transform the auto insurance industry and essentially be there for people at the moment they need help. With Cloudera, we use IoT and machine learning to drive intelligence and predict outcomes from billions of miles of driving data, and over 438,000 severe crashes from over five million cars – the largest connected-car subscribed installed base in the world," said Gianfranco Giannella, chief operating officer at Octo Telematics.

With billions of sensors, smart machines and connected devices generating data every second, the Internet of Things (IoT) is placing unprecedented demands on organisations' data storage, processing and analytic capabilities. Cloudera (NYSE: CLDR), the modern platform for machine learning and analytics, optimized for the cloud, announced that more enterprises across an array of sectors are turning to Cloudera Enterprise Data Hub to power their IoT journey, generate actionable insights and as a result, disrupt their own industries. Cloudera is enabling real-time data insights and predictive analytics to help companies use IoT to drive operational efficiencies, introduce new products and services, improve the customer experience and create wholly new business models. Customers today are increasingly utilising components such as Apache Kudu and Apache Spark to drive real-time processing, machine learning, and analytics on all of their IoT data, including data in motion and data at rest. "Organisations who use machine learning and analytics to deliver new insights from the explosion of IoT data, have enormous power to disrupt entire industries," said Tom Reilly, chief executive officer at Cloudera.

A new report claims drivers will likely treat autonomous cars like mugs once we start sharing roads. The report, from Good Year and the London School of Economics, surveyed nearly 12,000 drivers. The majority of them said they would be able to take advantage of autonomous cars – knowing they would be forced to stop or give way in confrontational situations. This meant that drivers would be able to take advantage of their'safe' nature and cut them off or force them to wait at junctions. But others are not so sure. Andrew Lee, head of market intelligence and analysis at Octo Telematics says that it's more likely autonomous cars will be driver towards the edges of what cars can do.