The question is no longer “if”, but “when” will key applications be moved to the cloud.
With over 4.13 billion internet users worldwide, the big data revolution is well and truly in full-swing. Industries around the world are improving their capacity to access and mine data from all kinds of sources.
For those who enjoy a light read, below is a quick summary:
- Why adopt cloud computing?
- How does cloud computing impact your customer experience?
- Cloud computing in 2021
- The hybrid cloud
- Remote working will continue in 2021
- Containers and Kubernetes
Why adopt cloud computing?
The British Bankers’ Association (BBA) has identified three key drivers for adoption of public cloud-based services by banks:
Agile innovation
Accessing the cloud increases the ability to innovate by enhancing agility, efficiency and productivity into the cloud environment. It can also help banks to reallocate resources away from the administration of IT infrastructure, and towards innovation and fast delivery of products and services to markets.
Risk mitigation
The cloud helps to lower risks associated with traditional technology, such as capacity, redundancy and resiliency concerns. The ability of cloud computing to scale can equip banks with more control over issues like security. With technology advancing at a phenomenal rate, entrusting in a cloud environment that is capable of managing innovative feats while mitigating risk, provides an organisation with a thought process of “what can we innovate next?” rather than “is our technology regulation compliant?”.
Cost benefit
The cost savings of public cloud solutions are significant, especially given the reduction in initial capital-expenditure requirements for traditional IT infrastructure. During periods of peak customer demand, the cloud can allow banks to manage computing capacity more efficiently. When the cloud is adopted for risk-mitigation and innovation purposes, cost benefits arise from the resultant improvements in business efficiency.
How does cloud computing impact customers?
According to Sys Group, by the end of 2020, 67% of enterprise software infrastructure could become cloud-based, with 85% of businesses worldwide already making use of cloud technology to store information.
Although it seems inevitable that all companies will be cloud-based in the near future, how does this affect the banking sector’s biggest priority, its customers?
Through accessibility. It’s anywhere!
Cloud technologies have allowed for advances in the ways that employees deliver customer experiences through connected data sources. When these systems aren’t cloud based, employees are often limited to specific locations where they’re able to retrieve data. This accessibility promotes a more efficient workforce that’s less reliant on hardware and connecting servers, and instead focused on a ‘search and find’ process.
Not only are employees benefiting from easy access to information. Customers are also able to log in to self-service applications at the time and place that’s convenient to them, they’re more likely to be pleased with their customer experience.
Personalising your customer experience
Understanding your customer journey and how they behave creates an opportunity to build technology that compliments their experience. Through data stored in the cloud, customer behavior can be analysed and segmented based on interactions they have with a financial institute, whether this interaction is in person, over the phone, or online.
Collaboration with all team members
According to American Banker, many banks are indicating that some of their workforces will continue to work remotely in 2021, including JPMorgan and UBS Group. How does this affect the customer experience? Cloud functions allow for multiple team members to access the same information at once, as well as allow users in various locations and on varying devices to make updates in real time.
The Hybrid Cloud
Hybrid cloud poses many benefits, from speed to security. According to Gartner, the worldwide public cloud services market is about to grow by almost 17 per cent, computing to produce a gross amount of $266.4 billion by 2020. This has increased from 14.5% in the previous year.
Hybrid cloud computing benefits, include:
- Speed: It optimises the network to reduce the latency and speeds up the data so that it can reach where it needs to be.
- Control: Organisations can customise, optimise, and adjust the end of their hybrid cloud model to suit their needs.
- Security: You get both its benefits in security; use of the private cloud and services of the public cloud. While the data once held in a private cloud is transferred to the public cloud for analytics and other processes, extensive encryption techniques can be added to ensure better security.
Hybrid cloud computing provides control and security of private networks as well as the expansiveness and versatility of the public cloud.
Remote working will continue in 2021
With security and internal IT teams deployed to handle hardware and remote connectivity among staff, now is an opportune time for cybersecurity to be compromised. In 2021, third-party support for cloud computing security is vital, as businesses will continue to change the way they work and operate.
With the changing world and evolving technology, adoption of tech is visible in almost all workspaces, even at home. The rise in the count is also due to the employee’s increasing needs. All generations will (or already are) digital natives through the demand for more knowledge of cloud computing and every other tech advancements required to work remotely.
Cloud computing and other related technologies will integrate both the sections which will grant nothing but productivity to the enterprises. With companies like Google, Indeed, and Uber embracing remote working through to 2021, cloud computing is now an essential part of the virtual office setup.
Containers and Kubernetes
If you’re not in the industry, you’re probably wondering “what are Containers and Kubernetes?”. You’re not alone.
Containers are a unit of software, a packaging mechanism where applications can be abstracted from the environment in which they actually run. Kubernetes is a portable, extensible, open-source platform for managing containerized workloads and services, that facilitates both declarative configuration and automation.
Whether the environment is a private data centre or the public cloud, applications can be deployed easily and consistently. The IDC predicts that along with Kubernetes, 95 percent of more new-micro services will be deployed in the containers by 2021. Containers have been standard practice for application development in the public cloud. However, the Kubernetes formula was designed for scalable development. For now, the rise of Kubernetes has extensively increased the use of containers to private cloud as well as the public cloud.
We hope you found this blog useful! To learn more on Cloud Computing, download ‘The Digital Economy in 2021: Banking and Finance’ white paper. Crystal Delta is a global software engineering practice specialising in banking, finance, and education. Contact us today for more information on how we can support your software and engineering
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