The increase in adoption of the public cloud is vital to the whole industry, including banks, cloud providers and regulators, according to James Kemp, managing director, head of technology and operations at The Association for Financial Markets in Europe (AFME).
Kemp made the comments as part of a paper published by AFME that set out recommendations to help realise the full potential of public cloud computing across the capital markets industry.
Kemp said: “The use of public cloud in financial services offers significant opportunities and benefits for all parties. However, to realise these and increase adoption it is vital that the whole industry, including banks, cloud providers and regulators, continue to collaborate.”
He added: “This includes ensuring the knowledge, skills, security and risks are appropriately assessed and identified throughout this long-term transformation.”
Public cloud adoption is currently being used for capacity bursting, running sophisticated data analytics, supporting innovation projects and improving resiliency.
However, AFME found that banks are still at an early stage of public cloud adoption. Over two-thirds of AFME members asked estimated that only 1 to 10 percent of their bank’s current workload was using some level of public cloud today.
The paper outlined several barriers to cloud adoption at present, including legacy IT complexity, security implications, regulatory concerns, a lack of standardisation in cloud provider services, and long-term considerations on concentration risk, among others.
In order to support continued public cloud adoption, AFME proposed that banks should design their public cloud strategy with a clear and realistic target operating model, review and reprioritise accordingly, and ensure executive sponsorship throughout the adoption.
AMFE also recommended cloud providers to continue engagement with banks and regulators to support building the capabilities and assurances required as well as supporting increased standardisation that can also satisfy regulatory requirements.
It added that the industry, as a whole, must continue to share knowledge, best practice, and promote standardisation and consistency, in how public cloud is adopted.
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