Cloud Computing News #1: Financial institutions need cloud

This week we focus on cloud adoption in the Financial Services Industry.

Global study reveals investment banks welcome public cloud adoption for innovation first, not cost reduction

GFT, the global IT consultancy for the financial services industry revealed in July the results of their global study into cloud adoption across the capital markets functions of over 32 tier 1 and tier 2 investment banks.

According to the cloud adoption survey:

• Cloud adoption is on the rise: investment banks are set to increase their use of public cloud by over 50 % within the next five years
• Main benefits agility and elasticity: 3/4 of investment banks are more excited by cloud computing's ability to introduce agility and resource elasticity into their businesses than its ability to simply deliver cost reductions (50% of respondents)
• Where to adopt it first: investment banks are most keen to introduce cloud in development / testing (67%), front office (55%) and risk (43%) departments
• Some concerns remain:  90% of respondents cite regulation their main concern for cloud adoption, followed by data protection (72%), and security (70%).

Find out more about this study here Read more on why the Financial Services Industry needs to rethink its IT by embracing the cloud in our recent blog here.

Open banking forces banks to focus on consumer centric products and services

According to a recent study by PwC, the emergence of open banking requires financial institutions to think differently about how they will deliver value to their customers. Open banking is going to transform the way we pay for goods and services and manage our finances. Currently, banks are burdened by a product-centered thinking legacy. What are the challenges open banking poses for traditional banks?

• New strategy and business model
• New customer centric operating model
• Openness to partnerships or operating as part of a wider ecosystem of providers
• Data management
• Technology platform
• Cybersecurity and risk management

Open banking revolution will create new partnerships or create joint ventures between banks, fintechs or hyper-scale cloud providers and enablers like Nordcloud to be relevant in the future. In the long term, banks will need to find a new place in the disrupting industry. Download the PwC survey here Read also in our blog how to build a business case for the cloud in financial services.

Barclays Bank intends to shut down 18 datacenters and go all-in with AWS public cloud services

According to Barclays, the project is part of a wider push by the banking giant to increase its ability to respond to the ever-changing financial services landscape. "With cloud technology, you can scale from zero and get to market very quickly; and get an idea to market in weeks, if not days" said Nick Funnell, development practice lead in Barclays’ chief technology officer application hosting division. Barclays is going all-in on the AWS public cloud through adopting the principles of DevOps. Read the full article in ComputerWeekly

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Cloud computing is on the rise in the financial services - are you ready?

Download our free white paper Compliance in the cloud: How to embrace the cloud with confidence, where we outline some of the many benefits that the cloud can offer, such as:

• Lowered costs
• Scalability and agility
• Better customer insights
• Tighter security