Partner Article

Boardrooms driving financial services to the cloud

Rackspace, the #1 managed cloud company, today revealed the motivations and experiences of financial services and accountancy organisations which have migrated to the cloud. The findings come from a Vanson Bourne study* which polled 500 UK IT and business decision-makers who have either been through or are currently planning a cloud migration project, of which 14% worked within the financial services/ accountancy sector.

According to the study, the lure of cloud comes from its ability to give financial services organisations a competitive edge and is the reason for CEOs, business leaders and Board of Directors being the main sponsor for more than two thirds (67%) of cloud migration projects in this sector. This high level of buy-in for cloud is hugely significant as technology is increasingly being expected to drive financial services innovation.

Giri Fox, Director of Technical Services, Rackspace, says: “Both consumers and business leaders are driving the demand to digitise online services onto cost-effective platforms which are available anywhere, at any time. Financial services organisations need to have a scalable IT infrastructure to satisfy these demands, while also having processes in place to protect sensitive customer data. The complexity of managing this technology is leading firms to look for help from outside expertise.”

Other findings from financial services/ accountancy respondents which have already moved to the cloud include:

• Reducing IT costs was the biggest motivation for moving to the cloud (66%), followed by increasing resilience (55%), increasing agility (47%) and stabilising existing platforms/ applications (43%). A third (34%) of completed cloud migrations also aimed to accelerate innovation, conceivably to keep up with new digital disruptors in the sector
• Nearly half (45%) of respondents said their organisations migrated business-critical data to the cloud first – this is a more cautious approach than other sectors which averaged 58% migrating business-critical data to the cloud first
• 64% of respondents migrated to a private cloud, 30% to a public cloud and 32% to a hybrid cloud
• With just three in ten (30%) respondents having a good experience in operating a cloud environment themselves, more than half (57%) turned to a third party supplier
• 98% of respondents said their organisation’s business goals were met to some extent by their migration to the cloud, higher than the average across all industries (88%)

Harry Thompson, Founder, Director and CTO of Kurtosys, says: “Kurtosys has been providing hosted applications for customers since inception in 2002. Our decision in 2012 to move from building traditional co-located hosting to consuming cloud based IaaS was seen as an important step in strategic scaling of our business and has facilitated growth and expansion of services.

“We handle a range of customer data, sometimes containing personal information, but always requiring sensitive treatment to ensure that confidentiality, integrity and availability is maintained. We operate a Hybrid strategy and depend on Private Cloud solutions to support some aspects of customer acceptance and data security in line with this policy.”

NOTES TO EDITORS

*About the research

Rackspace commissioned independent technology market research specialist Vanson Bourne to undertake this piece of research. 250 IT decision makers and 250 business leaders were interviewed throughout September and October 2015. Respondents were asked one of two question sets, depending on their organisation’s progress with cloud migration. First, those whose organisation had already conducted a cloud migration project (375 respondents) and secondly, those whose organisation had not yet completed a cloud migration but were planning to within the next 18 months (125 respondents). Respondents came from an even distribution of sizes/sectors and were conducted online using a rigorous multi-level screening process to ensure only suitable candidates were given the opportunity to participate.

About Rackspace

Rackspace (NYSE: RAX), the #1 managed cloud company, helps customers tap the power of cloud computing without the challenge and expense of managing complex IT infrastructure and application platforms themselves. Rackspace engineers deliver specialised expertise on top of leading technologies like OpenStack, Microsoft and VMware through a results-obsessed service known as Fanatical Support®. Rackspace was named a leader in the 2015 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud-Enabled Managed Hosting, and has been honoured within the top 100 Great Places to Work for the past 11 years. Learn more at www.rackspace.co.uk

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Rackspace UK .