A Gartner survey found that cloud is the top priority for global financial services (FS) CIOs and that 39% of the survey respondent expect that more than half of all their transactions will be supported via cloud infrastructure and software as a service (SaaS) by 2015.
Forty-four per cent of FS CIOs in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) expect that more than half of all their institutions’ transactions will be supported via cloud infrastructure by 2015, and 33% of them expect that the majority of transactions will be processed via SaaS by 2015.
Gartner managing vice president Peter Redshaw said early cloud adoption, especially in the FS sectors, may have been limited to non-core areas and proofs of concept, but it is set to go mainstream, moving the heart of the business, transaction origination and processing, into the cloud.
"Cloud banking should be innovative, dedicated to this industry and transformative. Cloud banking has the ability to drive ‘creative destruction," Redshaw said.
"As well as helping to improve or optimize an existing service or process, cloud banking can provide the wealth – or the freedom – to try completely new services and processes, such as reverse auctions and third-party core banking systems, maybe even running them in parallel.
"Successful new cloud services can displace the existing and dominant process for design, distribution or transacting in a disruptive way, rather than just incrementally improving them."
Cloud is a top priority for banks that need to continue a long-term focus on efficiency and support the CEO’s growth strategy by becoming more flexible and agile to support new business models, new markets, new channels, and new products, the report said.
