The move to hybrid cloud is one which virtually every industry is undertaking – but the financial services industry is getting there ahead of most.
According to the latest data issued by Nutanix for its Enterprise Cloud Index Report, more than one in five financial organisations polled (21%) are deploying a hybrid cloud model today. This is up from the global average of 18.5%. 91% of those polled said hybrid cloud was their ‘ideal’ IT model.
Yet while the push to hybrid is still an important one, there are plenty of areas where financial firms are struggling. Like many other industries – insurance being another one, as sister publication AI News found out when speaking to LV= earlier this week – a serious concern remains over rearchitecting and organising legacy systems.
88% of respondents to the Nutanix survey found that while they expected hybrid cloud to positively impact their businesses, hybrid cloud skills themselves were scarce. According to the data, financial services firms run more traditional data centres than other industries, with 46% penetration, as well as a lower average usage of private clouds; 29% compared to 33% overall.
Naturally, this is the part of the wider report which covers many more industries. Yet Nutanix wanted to shed a light on the financial side because of its apparent highs and lows.
“Increased competitive pressure, combined with higher security risks and new regulations, will require all of the industry to look at modernising their IT infrastructure,” said Chris Kozup, Nutanix SVP of global marketing in a statement. “The current relatively high adoption of hybrid cloud in the financial services industry shows that financial firms recognise the benefits of a hybrid cloud infrastructure for increased agility, security and performance.
“However, the reality is that financial services firms still struggle to enable IT transformation, even though it is critical for their future,” added Kozup.
Writing for this publication last month, Rob Tribe, regional SE director for Western Europe at Nutanix, noted how organisations across industry were waking up to the need for hybrid, but noted the need for up-to-date tools to help expedite the process. Tribe noted how expert analytical tools, cloud-based disaster recovery (DR) and cross-cloud networking tools were key for performance, availability and security.
“Delivering these and other hybrid cloud management tools will be far from easy, and will require a lot more cooperation between cloud vendors and service providers than we’re seeing at present,” wrote Tribe. “However, with growing numbers of enterprise customers moving to hybrid, it’s very much in everyone’s best interests to work together.
“It’s time to join up the dots between clouds and deliver the visibility, technologies and tools needed to make it easier to exploit this exciting – and soon to be de facto – way of provisioning and managing enterprise IT,” Tribe added.
You can analyse the full Nutanix survey data here.
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