Financial Industry Accepts Cloud Computing in Banks & Credit Card Firms. Cloud computing in the Financial Industry: From the onset, the financial Industry did not oppose to the growing acceptance of cloud computing in several monetary institutions. Big financial institutions have seen how cloud technology has benefited some of its divisions, including the banking and insurance and in a positive way. They are not very outspoken and curious about it but they have come to an understanding with the fact that the cloud integration has assisted them simplify their daily operations and function more professionally. But now, Cloud computing enables convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage etc).
Sometime ago, Skyhigh Networks carried out an assessment to discover how satisfied financial establishments are using the cloud technology in their businesses. The results gotten from the survey, show that an average financial services company makes use of more than one thousand cloud services.
However, that number was gotten from a report based on the survey data collected from over three million staffs working in commercial banks, credit card firms and insurance companies among other similar financial institutions. Now the questions goes; what are the major reasons that make these different organizations happy in using cloud-based services?
How does Cloud Computing benefit the Financial Industry?
Security of Information & Data
You will agree with me that security is the major worry when it comes to accepting any new technology, most particularly the cloud-based contributions. On the other hand, different type of business are migrating to the cloud these days to reinforce their security setup.
Owing to the annual rise in the total number of cyber-attacks and data breaches, it is rather challenging to have a guaranteed Information Technology environment safe from cyber criminals. Inside a usual IT infrastructure, cyber-crimes as simple as a phishing email attack, although in a stylish way, has the capability to destroy the whole network of any organization.
As a matter of fact, cloud computing offers an extremely strong security architecture and goes through severe security authorizations at regular periods.
Cost Effectiveness
Getting a cheap price may not be of importance for the financial industry, but then again one certainly can’t complain about the security advantages that is attached to the cloud technology platform. Also, cloud will assist this industry to limit the expenditures of servers and data centers as well as other essential IT setups. This feature eliminates the total budget of ownership and upkeep of the setup.
File Storage and Big Data
Storage of files, information and data is one of the major advantages of migrating to the cloud. You will agree that the finance industry generates incredible amounts of data on daily basis because of the huge number of card transactions or payments, loans, stock market transactions, insurance documentations, deposits and withdrawals. Not like the native Information Technology setup where constant software upgrades and maintenance is obligatory, cloud computing delivers unrestricted storage size to make sure companies do not need to be concerned about growing amounts of data and information.
Scalability
Even though the commercial institutions have more than enough resources allocated for all the responsibilities in business, they do not fail to perform resourcefully every day. However, it is also likely for them to encounter issues in different sectors at certain periods. Again, they may also come across drawbacks when their political administrations declares new or change of policies in the finance sector which in turn defies the efficacy of their resources. Cloud computing helps the industry to measures resources without the constraint of any interference to ensure the duties are achieved without any problems.
Compliance to Terms & Policies
Cloud providers, vendors and resellers take very rigid actions to ensure sure that in joining with and offering services to finance industries, no agreements are violated by one or the other party. As a matter of fact, regulatory bodies join hands with some of the key cloud vendors for monitoring purposes. On the other hand, it is recommended that that financial institutions should make it a duty to deliberate every details before choosing to sign up with any vendor or reseller.
Mobility and/or Flexibility
The Cloud computing is an online platform, so it allows team members to work from any location (either work, home, school etc.). In the light of this, employees can make use of their personal tablets and smartphones for real-time views, monitoring and analysis. Furthermore, they can access proprietary business applications, company emails, and CRM tools when they are out of their workstation or during weekends and public holidays.
Conclusion
In a summary, let’s reveal a survey done by Finextra Research, which shows that eighty three percent of respondents said their bank’s current fundamental technology can no longer support its needs. Additionally, about ninety percent approves cloud based services and SaaS as part of the new setup.
Related: Cloud Computing in Retail Industry
We bring to light the report contributor and independent financial consultant (Chris Skinner) who had to say on migrating the Information Technology setup to the cloud:
“You cannot become a digital bank without core systems renewal; you cannot renew core systems without using cloud for data management; you need to consolidate data in the cloud to be able to perform effective data analytics; and when you’ve renewed core systems through the cloud to perform data analytics, then you can innovate.”
On a final note, the cloud is taking the world of technology and all industries by storm. Keep in mind that the Finance industries, in particular, should not delay in transfiguring to it.
