Cloud computing can help banks better serve their customers, but how? This is the starting point for a series of four informative videos entitled the “Foundations of digital financial services”, a conversation between Dominic Stewart, Senior Director and Head of Cloud Engineering at Oracle UK, and Joy Macknight, editor of the prestigious business magazine The Banker.
Each of the chapters that make up this series of The Banker’s Masterclass is dedicated to a key aspect that helps to understand the potential of cloud computing for banks, “a technology that offers extraordinary possibilities in terms of security and resilience to companies and that Latinia promotes with our clients as a key part of their digital transformation process”, according to Marc Alcón, CEO of Latinia.
The power of data
One of the topics analysed by Dominic Stewart is the relationship between the cloud and big data. Banks handle huge volumes of customer data on a daily basis, both personal and transactional, which can become valuable sources of knowledge and an important competitive business advantage if managed effectively. The challenge is to exploit this hidden data economy, relying on data lakes (state-of-the-art data storage solutions) and the agility offered by a cloud environment for their processing. Financial institutions that lead this process will be able to drive new levels of real-time analytics that will have a positive impact on their customers.
In the words of Dominic Stewart, “democratising machine learning is important because data science is the key to competitive advantage for most enterprises, particularly for financial services, and in order to be competitive, enterprises need to invest in technology, people, and programmes to licit that value”.
Security, a key factor
Cloud technology is transforming the financial industry and despite the challenges for banks in adopting it, such as the coexistence of hybrid cloud and on-premises models as well as public and private environments, the benefits in terms of elasticity, agility and security are multiple and significant. According to Dominic Stewart, it is a safe technology for the bank and its customers as long as the right precautions are taken in its implementation: “The main risk during migration to a cloud system for banks is in integration and we have to make sure that things work reliably together. Working with trusted partners, who work to mitigate these risks, will be of great help in completing the process successfully.”
Latinia has been working with its customers for a long time, accompanying them in their migration processes to the cloud. “At Latinia, we are prepared to deploy our solutions with maximum guarantees of operational continuity and as always, taking advantage of the new resources and flexibility provided by the cloud, adapting to the needs of our customers,” says Marc Alcón.
Cloud computing is consolidating its position as one of the most important technological trends thanks to its scalability, flexibility, optimization of its location and, most notably, its high level of IT security in all systems, concludes Dominic Stewart: “The cloud has matured. Cloud computing is more secure for enterprises. There is absolute advantage to both security and resilience with a well architected cloud deployment these days, because I am convinced that security is in a good place in the cloud’s environment”.
Categories: Cloud & Tech
