With so much work happening remotely in the current environment, many more companies are now assessing their on-prem environments and looking to the cloud for a solution that can be remote managed in a cost-effective way. From multinational financial institutions all the way through to SMEs, migrating back-end services to the cloud can offer businesses a host of advantages – helping them both improve their service offering and maintain business continuity in more challenging times. However, many companies are often reluctant to migrate their systems into the cloud – especially those in the financial sector, such as banking or insurance businesses. This resistance to change stems from the critical nature of their systems. While these concerns are very important, innovation continues to be a priority. But without digital transformation, not only will they get left behind, but given the current pandemic, they won’t be able to operate to their full potential. Let’s consider why they should think again – and just how they could benefit from moving your infrastructure to the cloud.
Unified Resources
Financial services companies typically have growth strategies focused around acquisitions. As a result, the businesses they buy bring with them legacy systems that need to be integrated into the wider network. From a consistency perspective, this can be hugely problematic.
Bringing new and existing systems together means the introduction of new data. All this data has value and being able to derive meaning from it can be of huge benefit if done correctly.
By having all your access and data hosted in the cloud, companies of any size can easily apply the very latest AI and machine learning tools to access these new insights – making the process of integration far easier for everyone.
Cost Reduction
The interruption in normal operations means that one of the limiting factors for remote working of large organisations is hardware. Providing new servers in data centres or maintaining as well as upgrading internal computing to support your services will be especially difficult with strained distribution channels.
A typically localised on-premise setup requires consistent hardware growth – which will be planned for and budgeted for over time. The cloud frees up much of this cost by being almost infinitely expandable based on your businesses’ needs at the time.
Given the current challenges, many businesses are now contracting – either furloughing or making staff redundant.
Where IT costs are concerned, with on-premise services, they remain exactly the same – regardless. But with a SaaS-based cloud service, the monthly costs can be reduced to match the number of exact users at any given time.
Business Continuity
Right now, many businesses are struggling to get engineers to on-site data-centres – to conform with social distancing guidelines, which puts companies with legacy on-premise systems at a serious disadvantage.
But those that have migrated to a cloud service have complete business continuity – as all data, applications, software programmes, and communication tools remain operational and accessible. This lack of interruption enables them to continue providing their customers with the services they require – which at this time may be more crucial than ever.
Security Assured
Whether you are running a multinational bank or an SME, the need for security can never be underestimated. With a cloud server, because all data is stored in one place, it can be easily backed up for additional security. Plus data encryption comes as standard – while tools like Single Sign-On and Access Controls give individual employees the exact permissions they need.
Whilst many companies are nervous of shifting their systems and data to the cloud due to the fear of data loss or resourcing costs, the benefits significantly outweigh the risks. While flexible working may be the catalyst for many companies to choose the cloud, it’s also clear that, moving forward, there are many more reasons to do so.
ActionPoint have already helped many of our clients make the move to the cloud. We call this service Complete Cloud Migration. To take the next step on your cloud journey, click here.
