Capitalizing on Cloud for Banks

In this COVID-19 pandemic era, the financial services industry is faced with a progressive demand from customers expecting digital and personalized experiences. Banks must actively make more extensive use of cloud platforms to drive business value. Users require faster, more adaptive experiences—from online banking and apps, to mobile-only banks. Cloud technology helps banks achieve this and drive new revenue opportunities.

Cloud is not a new concept in banking—it is an essential tool for banks to stay competitive in today’s challenging business environment. It’s not surprising then that investment in cloud technology in banking continues to soar. According to recent research by the Culture of Innovation Index, 92 percent of corporate banks are already utilizing cloud or planning to make further investments in 2020.

Banks understand the importance of embracing cloud adoption in order to become more efficient, secure, and scalable in their day-to-day work, and remain competitive in the market. It’s one of the key reasons we are seeing banks replicating the fast pace and agility of FinTech start-ups, sometimes known as ‘challenger’ banks. The former have historically been heavily reliant on legacy systems and ways of working, and are often reluctant to make changes to their complex IT infrastructure; whereas the latter have impressed customers and industry stalwarts with their speed, flexibility and digital strengths.

For banks, the question is not if they should migrate their infrastructure to the cloud, but how can they become more efficient and scalable once they are in the cloud. Banks should be asking the key critical questions: “What is my cloud ache?”; “Are we migrating to the cloud, or are we suffering the pain of not knowing how to manage our cloud infrastructure once we are here?”; “How can we keep evolving with technology while being more efficient as a business?”;or “How can I carry out an IT infrastructure assessment and define a cloud strategy?”.

There is no single cloud strategy for all banks or other financial institutions, and this is why SoftServe works on a case-by-case basis to help banks complete cloud readiness and architecture assessments, including validating, verifying, and identifying business drivers, as well as providing a roadmap for improvement and consolidated services.

For example, SoftServe worked with GoTransverse to understand their cloud ache, and provide more scalability and security. Production environments required automation of management procedures and consistency. SoftServe created multi-client environments from scratch following AWS best practices, Infrastructure-as-Code principles, and using proper tools, techniques, and methodologies. This resulted in completion of the client’s first AWS project, and significant improvement of real-time decision-making processes and performance.

FINE-TUNE YOUR CLOUD STRATEGY

Having a cloud strategy that delivers efficiency and scalability when developing products for a decreased time-to-market is absolutely crucial for any bank seeking to maintain competitive differentiation while achieving sustainable security and profitability. Banks are at a critical juncture. Planning and assessing cloud adoption, migration, and optimization requires a deep understanding of your current infrastructure—how it works, why, and a path to improvements through stringent testing. Combining a multi-cloud approach with hands-on performance monitoring will help establish a regular check-up on the cloud infrastructure. For this reason, you’ll want to make sure you have the right cloud partner and technologies to manage cloud network performance for your bank.

Our cloud experts provide a transparent process to the lift & shift, re-platform or re-architecture operations, which is succinct and avoids heavy overhead costs. SoftServe is a certified partner of major cloud providers, including Amazon (AWS), Google (GCP), and Microsoft (Azure). To learn more about where you are in your cloud journey read our whitepaper, “FIXING THE CLOUD ACHE: BANKS MUST STAY AHEAD OF THE CURVE”.