As the financial world continues to evolve, financial institutions must constantly be on the lookout to improve their security from fraudsters, while ensuring expenditure does not reach an all-time high as digitalisation across the market continues to boom.
One possible solution to this is the implementation of a hybrid cloud system – as the world accepts a remote working environment, a seamless transition must take place in order for businesses to remain operational while ensuring the safety of data.
But what is a hybrid cloud? Historically there have been two types of cloud technology: the public cloud and the private cloud. Each has had its perks: highly scalable compute solution through the public cloud allows enterprises to avoid the capital expense and resources of purchasing, installing and managing hardware, opting instead for a pay-as-you-go operational expense model; or the security ensured through the private cloud where data locality, data governance and low latency are business-critical. The hybrid cloud combines the two architectures, allowing businesses to choose the best solution at any given moment.
“Hybrid cloud is a combo of private, on premises and public cloud computing from external providers,” explains Jonathan G., an advisor at Dell Technologies, who created an analogy between a hybrid cloud model and a hybrid car. “In a similar way that a hybrid car uses various forms of power for an efficient ride, the hybrid cloud is the same. When you’re doing something that requires a lot of processing power, you have access to the public cloud. When you’re doing something more secure like storing confidential information, you can use the private cloud. This creates the optimal experience for the business’ needs.”
Why is hybrid cloud needed?
The hybrid cloud is a great asset for any company due to its seamless, inclusive nature. In a similar way that owning a smartphone with a singular, all inclusive app is easier to use than one with a variety of apps–each of which needs individual management–a hybrid cloud model enables businesses to operate every facet in one place. Jonathan G states, “Growing IT budget constraints as well as data capacity issues with smaller businesses have caused a huge problem for SMEs looking to expand.”
This is especially true as software intelligence platform Dynatrace found that on average, financial services organisations relied on seven different solutions to monitor their multi-cloud infrastructure, with 64 per cent stating the abundance of tools made it difficult to optimise their performances.
If it’s this difficult, you might be wondering why even bother with a multi-cloud model in the first place? It’s no longer a question of if you want to, but a question of when it is being implemented. A multi-cloud model is necessary as hybrid work establishes itself as a norm in society. Employees must be able to access secure data from home whilst ensuring they can complete the actions of their daily lives. This nature of work makes it impossible to efficiently run a business using a single cloud model.
Overcoming potential pitfalls
A hybrid cloud model is not perfect however. Despite it condensing the training that IT developers need to do, as the hybrid cloud provides an end-to-end solution, it can be further improved by the use of AI. A survey found that AI enables data to be better analysed, determining how cloud implementation could be best used. This is further supported by NVIDIA’s survey findings that cloud engineers believed a lack of AI was having a domino effect on efficient data usage.
Research from NVIDIA also showed that most AI projects and workloads in financial services don’t take place exclusively on the cloud. Only 23 per cent of these were done online whilst 36 per cent were done on premises, leaving the remaining majority to be done in a hybrid setting. One large reason for this is the cybersecurity concerns that can take place by using a single cloud architecture. Unsecured cloud infrastructure can lead to potential pitfalls for businesses. However, a solution like Dell’s APEX Hybrid Cloud, ensures that there are no leaks for hackers to exploit, as a workforce can be on site or remote and still have the security needed to ensure they can be most productive.
A cost-effective cloud solution
It’s not only subject-matter experts that can benefit from a hybrid cloud model. The vast majority (91 per cent) of banks surveyed by Accenture reported that the cost to maintain mainframes has increased over the past few years. In addition to this, failover and disaster capabilities must be accounted for – another expense for financial organisations.
One solution is Dell Technologies Cloud with PowerEdge servers and NVIDIA GPUs. It provides consistent operations that eliminate silos and reduce operational costs with tools that provide a consistent management experience across all clouds; consistent infrastructure that reduces operational complexity and simplifies workload migration with end-to-end, cloud-enabled solutions for storage, servers, data protection, open networking, hyperconverged and cloud IT infrastructure; and consistent services that develop and execute cloud strategy with help from Dell Technologies experts who offer consulting, deployment, support, education and managed services.
By providing a single operational hub for a consistent management experience across all clouds, Dell Technologies Cloud reduces complexity and operational costs to help organisations achieve their goals with greater agility, efficiency and speed.
