Financial services organisations are spending nearly £300 million each year on maintaining cloud services.
Financial services organisations in the UK, Ireland, France and Sweden have for the large majority (89%) encountered unplanned cloud spending.
According to research commissioned by Sungard, each financial services organisation is paying on average £277,000 per year on maintaining cloud services, this is much higher than the European average of £200,000.
Unexpected costs are also much higher in the sector, with each organisation spending an additional £570,000 over the last 5 years, compared to an EU average of £270,000. The causes of this have been primarily due to systems integration (54%), managing the deployment (34%) and integration costs between different clouds (39%).
A third of respondents stated that reduced IT costs that were expected, have not been achieved.
John Turner, IT Director at accountancy firm BDO, said: "One of the most crucial lessons we learnt is that cloud, while a vital tool for financial services organisations, is not a ‘one-size-fits-all’."
"Cloud computing is not the end result; it is a method through which we can achieve our business priorities – whether this is growth, launching a new product or service, increasing online capabilities, or streamlining control of overall infrastructure."
"Managed Services has been essential in helping us make crucial IT decisions for BDO. We need a technology partner that we can trust – not only to help us develop the correct strategy but also in explaining the best options available to execute those plans and ensure we achieve our desired business outcomes."
The report shows that despite cloud being as a way to reduce IT complexity, for 32% of respondents, it has actually increased the complexity of their IT infrastructure.
