News |
The future of the finance sector in the cloudThe beauty of cloud computing, and particularly Microsoft's unique proposition of joint on-premise and cloud-based solutions, is financial organisations can choose exactly which existing technology investments they wish to move into the cloud. This approach reduces risk and gives immediate cost reductions and solution ROI by removing infrastructure server needs and user support and software upgrade requirements at a stroke.Microsoft's Cloud solution for the finance industry is the Windows Azure platform, with Microsoft putting its weight behind cloud computing as the future of business technology. Windows Azure provides a platform from which to develop brand new applications rapidly and cost-effectively, creating innovative solutions specifically designed for use in the cloud, designed to cope with flexible demand and create new business opportunities to capitalise on the proliferation of web-enabled devices. In addition, without major upfront investment, Azure provides the capability to let financial organisations quickly test new ideas, offers, applications and systems in the real world. This enables financial institutions to become more agile and innovative, allowing them to adapt faster to customer needs and fast-track the development of innovative solutions for use by their clients. Financial institutions are used to having secure, in-house datacentre and support structures to run all their applications and store sensitive data so, on the surface, cloud computing may appear relatively risky territory. Whilst the cloud offers an opportunity to manage and process high volumes of data efficiently, with corresponding cost benefits, most financial organisations place greater emphasis on system reliability and data and information security. However, these concerns are rapidly evaporating as major financial organisations such as Aviva, the world's fifth largest insurance company, adopt solutions built on Microsoft software and services in the cloud. In addition, Microsoft is the first major online service provider to earn ISO/IEC 27001:2005 certification, external validation that its approach to managing security risk for a global organisation is both comprehensive and effective. Regarding the thorny issue of compliance, the cloud is not likely to cause any additional concerns. As financial organisations already use IT systems that are distributed across many data centres to enhance availability, data is already exchanged over public networks and existing security systems and the cloud use the same type of solution. The only new problem comes from public cloud offers where banks and insurance companies would need to have specific service level agreements in place to protect them from, for example, personal data crossing country borders. Ballard Chalmers has been working on systems designed for Private Equity Funds and investment banks and are currently developing a major Cloud solution for IPES to provide accounting, banking, billing, reporting and end-to-end transaction facilities for Private Equity Funds. This cloud-based system includes an integrated online reporting system, SWIFT transaction and back-end accounting system integration, a full ledger facility for posting multi-currency transactions and a client forecasting and billing facility. To find out more about Ballard Chalmers Cloud solutions for the finance sector, please email us or call Andrew Chalmers on 01342 410223. Related links
|
