IT managers at financial institutions will look to virtualisation and high performance computing (HPC) to drive their business in 2009, according to a survey by Platform Computing.
Over half (54%) of those quizzed felt that virtualisation will be the ‘watch-word’ for banks in 2009 as it is considered the infrastructure priority by the majority of banks. HPC was second on the list with (17%) followed closely by cloud computing (14%) and SOA (12%).
It is interesting to note that over half of respondents (51%) did not think that 2009 would be the year in which cloud computing took off in the financial industry. A further 31% did not know what impact cloud computing would have in 2009.
A number of reasons were given for this lack of adoption in cloud computing, including those who believed it to be an early stage adoption (29%), with the same number believing it to be an ill-defined term. Security was mentioned by 17% of respondents and lack of management buy-in was cited by 9%.
The survey quizzed 35 IT managers at Tier 1 banks and found that the driving force behind the adoption of HPC was cost reduction (54%) and meeting the increased risk management need (23%).
Jim Mancuso, head of financial services business unit at Platform Computing, said: “With the changes happening across the financial services industry coupled with the many IT terms being thrown around, it is sometimes challenging to differentiate what is hype from the real infrastructure priorities of banks.
“Our delegate survey has helped to shed light on the fact that virtualisation is a key technology priority in 2009, cloud computing is still in its infancy but will become more widely adopted in 2010, and that HPC continues to grow from strength to strength as it optimises existing assets to support ‘more from less’ approaches to IT.”
