Cloud

How Banks Can Manage Cloud Resources More Effectively

Cloud resources can streamline banking operations but can also lead to issues with spending and sprawl. Here’s a look at how CloudOps — and NetApp Spot — can help.

Scott Hiemstra

Scott Hiemstra is responsible for leading the Financial Services team for CDW. In his role as director, he is responsible for the short and long-term performance goals, strategic direction, business initiatives and talent development of the Financial Services organization.

Banks are spending on the cloud. According to a recent American Banker survey, cloud is a top five spending priority for more than 40 percent of executives. What’s more, 80 percent of respondents said they expect to move at least 20 percent of their computing infrastructure to the cloud in 2023.

The shift makes sense: Cloud solutions offer banks scalable resources tied to usage-based spending, and it can help eliminate the need for banks to over purchase onsite hardware as a stopgap against increasing resource demands.

Still, the cloud’s elastic nature also comes with potential challenges around the effective and efficient use of resources. Many businesses, including banks, can find themselves surprised by their monthly cloud spending and the pace of its growth, but are unsure how to rein it in.

However, the right approach — and the right solutions — can make it possible for banks to optimize their operations in the cloud.

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Current Challenges in Bank Cloud Management

Banks now face three common challenges in effective cloud management.

The first is their lack of visibility. For banks to make the most of the cloud, they need to know what they’re using, how they’re using it and where it’s located. As cloud spending ramps up to meet evolving market demands, however, it’s easy for banks to lose track of cloud deployment details, leading to increased cloud sprawl.

Next is agility, which allows businesses to reduce the time between information and action. For banks, however, the long tail of legacy solutions can affect this advantage. Consider a recent report noting that almost 190 banks are now at risk of failure if just half of their uninsured deposits were to be withdrawn in a bank run. Cloud computing solutions make it possible to calculate and reduce the likelihood of these events, but only if banks can identify where legacy tools and technologies inhibit process agility.

Spending rounds out the list. As banks look for ways to control total spending without negatively impacting operations, the cloud offers a solution, allowing organizations to pay only for what they need. Without effective oversight, however, cloud costs can spiral out of control.

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Why CloudOps Can Help Banks Stay Competitive

Much like DevOps before it, CloudOps focuses on visibility, automation and continuous optimization, but extends these principles into the cloud. For banks, a CloudOps approach makes it possible to align business objectives with cloud operations by making services visible and accessible.

Equipped with a complete picture of cloud-based network solutions and services, banks can understand what they have, what they don’t and where they can improve.

The implementation of intelligent automation can help deliver the flexibility that banks need to keep pace with changing conditions, while optimization using the DevOps principles of continuous integration and continuous delivery can help banks save money.

DISCOVER: Find out how the cloud is revolutionizing contact centers.

How NetApp Spot Can Help Financial Services

Of course, it’s one thing to talk about CloudOps for banks; it’s another to implement it at scale.

Spot by NetApp can help. Using Spot, banks can discover what they have in the cloud and what they can do to optimize these resources. Companies can also use these tools to significantly reduce their computing costs.

Spot also can help banks by finding unused resources in current cloud infrastructure and then offloading those resources to other consumers. In other words, Spot allows banks to effectively sublease some of their excess cloud resources to other businesses, allowing them to eliminate cloud sprawl and reduce costs without compromising performance.

Banks need the cloud to stay current, connect with fintech firms and effectively address emerging market challenges. But just having the cloud isn’t enough. Banks need to boost visibility, improve flexibility and control costs to make the most of cloud deployments.

This article is part of BizTech's EquITy blog series. Please join the discussion on Twitter.