FSIs use private cloud as 'stepping stone' towards ideal hybrid cloud

Hybrid cloud is the ideal operating model for many financial services organisations during COVID-19, and many are using private cloud as a 'stepping stone' to achieve their goals.

Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Index for Financial Services notes than 86% of the polled 3400 IT decision-makers declared hybrid cloud as the ideal model.

The transition is happening quickly - many organisations plan to reduce reliance on traditional non-cloud-enabled data centers by 10% within one year (from 14% to 4%). This includes the decommissioning, evolution, and integration of these older data centers.

Furthermore, 50% of financial services organisations (FSI) respondents say they have boosted their investment in hybrid cloud as a direct result of the pandemic.

FSI respondents also ranked security, privacy, and compliance issues as the most concerning when running applications within public cloud solutions (62%).

FSIs are using private cloud as a stepping stone to hybrid cloud, however, private cloud is critical to deploying and running applications - 43% of respondents aim to run more applications within private cloud in the coming year.

"Historically, financial services organisations have explored public cloud offerings when decommissioning legacy data centers," explains Nutanix industries solution marketing director Tapan Mehta.

"However, as the industry continues to place greater interest in data privacy and compliance issues, organisations are turning to the private cloud. This rapid increase in private cloud adoption serves as the basis for a hybrid cloud model, which is expected to become the industry norm over the next few years.

The index also evaluates FSIs' attitudes to hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) - that is, speeding up the time it takes to build software-defined infrastructure that supports private cloud. Almost half of FSI respondents say they have started deploying or have fully deployed HCI. A further 38% have plans to deploy it within the next two years.

FSIs' priorities include controlling IT resource usage (59%), gaining speed (58%) and flexibility needed (55%) to meet business requirements.

The index notes that cost is not the driving factor for cloud migration, respondents still rated cost savings (31%) as important.

For local organisations in Australia and New Zealand, Nutanix ANZ managing director Lee Thompson says that organisations are rethinking data use and new technologies. At the same time, open banking and hyper-personalised services are driving industry-wide change.

"The Royal Automobile Club of Queensland (RACQ) has already radically simplified its IT infrastructure, reducing its data center footprint, improving performance, and saving about half a million dollars in the process – savings which are being invested in next-generation technologies as they strive to always provide 'more for members'.