Last week Andrew McLean and I headed off to NYC for the Fintech Connect Cloud Banking Seminar with CloudFS.
Day one
The event kicked off with an opening address from the Founder and Managing Director of Arthurs Legal – Arthur van der Wees, setting the scene and introducing the event. We then broke straight into the Keynote panel discussion on the viability of cloud within the banking sector and what is and isn’t possible from this perspective.
The panellists were heavyweights in the industry and included: Bank Leumi USA, Everbank, Cross River Bank, Wells Fargo, CLSA, Americas and Appdirect. A lively debate formed from the panellists and a typical theme was mentioned through the whole segment – Security and Regulation.
[easy-tweet tweet=”This year and the next will be one of alliances and acquisitions within the Cloud arena.” user=”comparethecloud”]
Key takeaways for the day were from James O`Neill discussing the different cloud models for the industry, heavily debated around trust for the Hybrid option of cloud. A prominent view was that many banks are using Hybrid already, and that the biggest risks are the service providers, together with the rise of the Community Clouds that specifically service the Financial Services Industry.
Bob Savino, CTO of Moven Bank also entertained the audience with the rags to riches story of Moven, and the complexity of keeping up to date with the compliance and security governance to stay relevant.
What then followed in the afternoon was a whirlwind of information provided by even more heavyweights within the industry. With speakers representing BONYM, IBM, ING Bank, the NIST, and the CSA. Selling cloud to the board was a very interesting debate, particularly when discussing the overall concept of Cloud. The CTO/CIO requiring help with this to justify spend was stated and also a new way of thinking was required to make this challenge easier. With the 3 year typical cycle of hardware depreciation vs Outsource to the cloud being particularly popular, and banks still spending Capex on technology, this was not just about cost for IT Serviceability but also resilience and security.
The day ended on a high note with a summary by the chair on the days discussion with a welcome drinks reception and networking opportunities for the next hour.
Day two
The keynote was performed by Charaka Kithulegoda, CIO at Tangerine Bank with an overview of how to address transition from legacy to Cloud seamlessly with using a “Cloud First” mentality and this was the theme for the next few discussions too, with most stating that a single pain of glass approach for Cloud Service offerings is a must.
In my keynote I suggested that the rise of Compliant Clouds is upon us, as well as multi-vendor participation. This year and the next will be one of alliances and acquisitions within the Cloud arena.
Later in the day more discussions opened up on this topic and then led into what the NIST is currently reviewing for the standardisation of Cloud Services within the Financial Sector including potential ways of enforcing this.
Towards the later part of the day some fun was had with selfies of the audience and organisers and a scurry of removal men for the shows sponsors. Overall the event was very enlightening on what the Financial Services sector is doing, and taught us all a lot on their thoughts on cloud. The 3 main topics that were raised were very pertinent for the industry – Security, Resiliency and Regulation. I look forward to more cloud banking in the future.