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."
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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.
