Building a container of future with hybrid cloud

By Theodora Lau and Bradley Leimer

It has been less than nine months since IBM first launched its IBM Cloud for Financial Services ecosystem. We wrote about it back in July 2020, when we were in the initial stage of the pandemic and the world was scrambling to adjust to a new way of working and living. 

If there is anything we have learned in the past year, it is that flexibility and agility matter a great deal when there is so much uncertainty in the air. The same is true within the business model and technology that encompasses the global financial services industry. Migration to cloud will allow financial institutions to scale on demand, create efficiencies, and adjust to changing business needs. Shifting toward more flexible infrastructure enables financial industry players more vertical and horizontal flexibility within the expanding business model. 

While we might all agree that digital transformation is crucial to achieve this level of adaptation — not just for the present environment — but also to remain more viable in the long run, what is the best way to go about embarking on the journey?

Ecosystem is key to the future

As a large, regulated industry, financial services has to strike a delicate balance between the need to innovate, and maintaining the necessary vigor around security that is required. It is no wonder that some might compare incumbents to an ocean liner and fintech startups to a speedboat. The reality is much more nuanced than that. 

From assessment to validation, how can we create the framework to ensure compliance within a changing regulatory landscape while moving with the agility needed to compete effectively and efficiently? This is the key question for incumbents to tackle. Not only will we require a secure and compliant technology environment with trusted service partners and fintechs, we also need tools and resources to support real time monitoring and continuous compliance.

This is why developing within the right partnership ecosystem is critical and this is where the IBM Cloud for Financial Services comes into play. This suite of cloud infrastructure and applications has been built alongside a consortium of financial institutions including founding partner Bank of America from the ground up. Working in co-development with more and more global banks like European anchor client BNP Paribas, the ecosystem that launched with more than 30 partners last July has now tripled that number to more than 90. IBM has also continued to forge strategic partnerships with various financial institutions around the world to further strengthen the ecosystem, including most recently, Luminor Bank, the third largest bank in the Baltic region and Estonia. 

Today’s announcement (more here) is yet another evidence of IBM’s commitment to its IBM Cloud for Financial Services framework, the momentum it has gained in the industry, and with SAP joining the ranks of a growing list of ecosystem partners. The expanded IBM Cloud for Financial Services Validated offerings, including Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud, IBM Virtual Server for Virtual Private Cloud, IBM Cloud Object Storage, and IBM Block Storage for Virtual Private Cloud will help to accelerate and de-risk public cloud journeys for financial institutions, Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), and Fintechs alike. 

IBM Cloud for Financial Services Ecosystem

Containers of opportunity 

Containers have long been seen as a way to import and export opportunities (somewhat borrowing from the ocean liner metaphor used earlier); and the ability to leverage cloud native apps to build, deploy, and distribute these opportunities for this partnered ecosystem is no different. The opportunities created by the IBM Cloud for financial services foster solution synergies across trusted providers much like the flexibility of interchangeable containers crossing the vast ocean. With every independent software vendor in the ecosystem being vetted to ensure adherence to a standard set of criteria, these cloud native applications enable teams to move fast, deploy efficiently, and operate at an unprecedented scale. 

With Fiserv, Temenos, and Thought Machine on board, other core providers will likely follow. Combined with leading data and AI providers such as Kasisto, Personetics, and Cloudera, the future of digital banking will be more intelligent and personal. Combined with the regulatory and compliance guidance of Promontory Group and the industry council of advisors, this framework will open up opportunities for the entire financial services ecosystem. 

Era of trust and transparency 

By its very nature, trust is the currency required for successful cloud deployments. With an industry-informed approach, and support for real-time monitoring and continuous compliance, the IBM Cloud for Financial Services helps to reduce risk and protect data in the public cloud marketplace, while ensuring trust and transparency across their hybrid-cloud partners and the services connecting them.

At the heart of financial services and at the center of the business model is trust. The expanded ecosystem and a robust regulatory and compliance framework, provides the trust, transparency, security, and control that financial institutions need. 

The future of banking will consist of flexible, interchangeable, and innovative solutions, delivered within a shared framework of cloud-enabled ecosystem of partners and providers of services. Cloud adoption is a long journey. But with the right partner, and the right framework, it doesn’t have to be a lone journey.

Learn more about IBM Cloud for Financial Services here. 

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This article was sponsored by IBM. Learn more about their solutions at https://www.ibm.com/banking. 

Opinions are our own.

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