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The Cloud and Financial Services
The use of Cloud services continues to grow rapidly.
The business case for Cloud is compelling. Processing speeds can achieve in seconds, what may have taken hours when using old ways and internal processing power. For banks, regulatory changes like the fundamental review of the trading book mean faster processing is even more important. Using the cloud is also substantially cheaper for most firms. They no longer need to finance their own servers, software and staff and instead get a highly scalable resource which they can use as and when it is required: and pay for it only when they do use it.
There is a risk that low priced cloud services are not sustainable. Many challenger businesses use teaser-rate pricing to grow their customer base and build market share. If prices increase and the cloud no longer presents an effective saving, it could be difficult to switch providers or build a team back up and re-acquire the relevant software licences and hardware to restore and operate an effective system.