Cloud Connectivity

CLOUD CONNECTIVITY: Completing the puzzle in the finance w rld

From consumers moving towards online services, to new technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning entering the finance space, the current priority for the finance industry is to adapt to the changing environment around them.

To help the industry pivot, cloud adoption is playing an increasingly bigger role in this picture. While many financial organisations have long understood the benefits of cloud usage adoption has significantly accelerated in the past year, and looks set to continue to surge. Research from Ovum and ACI Worldwide, showed that 84% of FinTechs, 82% of corporate banks, 74% of retail banks and 79% of intermediaries plan to move mission-critical workloads into the cloud by the end of 2020.

Embracing the cloud enables organisations to speed up processing, eliminate data silos, boost collaboration, in addition to bringing out deeper insights and reduce infrastructure and operating costs. But to achieve this, organisations must think about what foundations need to be in place to support their cloud strategy goals.

Every cloud journey needs a connectivity strategy

The global professional services firm EY argues, “The benefits of cloud technology can’t be contested. It’s less expensive, easier to use, and in many ways, safer than private data centres. In addition to its benefits, cloud technology helps solve some of the most pressing concerns of financial institutions.” It goes without saying that the cloud is going to play a vital role in how the finance sector develops for years to come. However, that comes with pressure to get it right now.

For example, a stockbroker may use data to influence their decisions to purchase or sell, but they need to have access to this information quickly, then marry it with intelligence on their customer (their appetite for risk, etc.), and then be able to seamlessly make the purchase or sale. Having access to the data and partners that solves just one part of this equation isn’t helpful; it all has to be linked up.

This all requires speed, but, more importantly, it relies on a tightknit ecosystem for its success. Therefore, high performing cloud connectivity must be at the heart of any cloud strategy for finance organisations, so that they can tie these ecosystems together and move data quickly and securely. Despite this being a critical ingredient to success, many businesses have focused on what cloud service provider they will use or what application they want to run without considering how they will actually connect it all together.

While many CTOs focus on their cloud strategy, what really needs to be refined is their connectivity strategy.

On-demand cloud connectivity

When it comes to networks and connectivity, many finance organisations would have traditionally utilised a Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) network. However, when private MPLS networks were first deployed, accessing cloud providers may not have been top of mind. Today, this is a critical factor in the deployment.

To support the enterprise costs of deploying a large-scale MPLS network, an organisation most likely entered into a long-term contract, not necessarily planning for how cloud could affect that decision in the future and the challenges of being locked into their existing topology. Adding multiple clouds and managing connectivity on an existing MPLS platform is typically slow, costly, and complex. This is the last thing financial organisations want when trying to boost speed and flexibility.

This is where Software Defined Networks (SDN) and virtual routing services come into their own. They can solve the cloud connectivity problem without requiring financial organisations to rip and replace MPLS networks and manage the expense that comes with that.

Working with an SDN to connect to the cloud helps reduce complexity of IT infrastructure and costs. More importantly, for financial services, SDN can reduce downtime as it helps to virtualise most of the physical networking devices, making it easy to perform an upgrade for one piece rather than needing to do it for several devices.

Virtual routing services, meanwhile, are a great option to solve the complexities and costs that come with connecting an MPLS network to the public cloud. Essentially, it is a way of easily and virtually routing an existing MPLS network to the cloud via an SDN.

Another major consideration for IT leaders is whether their organisation can quickly adapt to peaks and troughs in demand. Increasing bandwidth when needed can be critical to quickly adapting to changes in the stock market, for example. Therefore, financial organisations should ensure that connectivity to the cloud is elastic — allowing bandwidth to be turned up or down in an instant. This flexibility ensures that core business operations don’t fall down if there are peaks in demand and, equally as important, IT leaders are not paying for unused bandwidth that they don’t need.

Blueprints for a cloud-driven strategy

As more financial organisations turn to cloud technology, the priority for CTOs now is to make sure they have the foundations ready for this move. They must ensure they can easily get to the cloud and can connect to the mission-critical applications and services that they rely on for success. Rather than asking what innovation the cloud can bring, CTOs should question how they can make the most out of it. What they’ll realise is that connectivity will form a central part of a cloud-driven strategy and completes the

puzzle in their transformation processes.

Eric Troyer, CMO, Megaport

Source: 1 https://www2.deloitte.com/global/en/pages/financialservices/articles/bank-2030-financial-services-cloud.html 2 https://www.aciworldwide.com/news-and-events/pressreleases/2019/september/banks-and-fintechs-are-globalleaders-in-payments-innovation-study-by-aci-worldwide-andovum-reveals 3 https://www.ey.com/en_gl/innovation-financial-services/ cloud