Are You Ready for Cloud 2.0?

Grazed from FTFNews. Author: Eugene Grygo.

I concluded late last year that end-user firms and financial technology providers were quietly entering the next phase of the cloud computing revolution. My analysis, based on anecdotal evidence, is that buy- and sell-side firms ignored the cloud hype three years ago and focused on how to alleviate the initial, justified concerns over data security and other operational barriers.

Once those barriers were adequately addressed, application and service providers of all stripes have been tripping over themselves to get on the cloud. The concept, of course, is not new and before the Dot Com bubble burst, there was a lot of excitement over software as a service. What happened in the meantime was that the technologies that support the supposed ephemeral cloud — virtualization, networking equipment, storage software and hardware capacity, security controls and data distribution, in particular — got a lot better…

With the underlying technologies more effective and easier to manage, it was only a matter of time before the cloud could claim its rightful place within securities operations. A recent report from market research firm Aite Group, “Capital Markets in the Cloud: Not Such a Gray Area” by Aite’s Sang Lee, co-founder and managing partner, and Virginie O’Shea, senior analyst, provides some confirmation of my highly unscientific, gut reaction…

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