Rising customer expectations, growing competition and a new era of ‘everything instant’ has meant that traditional Banks and Fintechs are having to rethink their operating models. Financial institutions can no longer afford to continue to maintain high cost, legacy on-premise infrastructure and multi-layered back office processes that just can’t keep up with the level of payment volumes being demanded.
How can these organisations deliver instant movement of funds on a 24/7 basis when their systems are designed to process payments in batches, with weekends reserved for essential maintenance? How can they move to a single processing solution and remove the many layers of back office spaghetti?
And, what happens when Banks’ need to adapt quickly to foreseeable global developments, new regulation and standards?
Move over On-premise, Cloud Native has arrived.
Cloud naturally lends itself well to the digital experience. The latest platform-based models with interconnected microservices and APIs to expose internal systems to third parties are all making it much easier to provide a more mobile and flexible proposition.
Let’s not sugar coat it though. Security is always front of mind for CIO’s and many are still holding on to their hosted Cloud arrangements which are essentially company applications hosted on dedicated servers in the Cloud, but the database still remains in-house. These were initially built for on-premise environments to move from a Capex (capital expenditure) to Opex (operating expense) finance model. Nevertheless companies are still operating an on-premise model, but it’s just hosted in the cloud.
Ten years later and Cloud has come a long way since the early days. Today, Cloud Native architecture is built specifically for cloud. It has the benefit of more flexibility over legacy systems that were built to run on a particular hardware infrastructure and can be difficult to move to cloud later on.
Cloud Native is:
- Highly scalable (i.e. hardware capacity can be increased or decreased rapidly)
- Highly resilient over multiple data centres (active-active-active)
- Highly automated data-based decision tools built in (identify and deal with potential threats early)
- Highest levels of security – with compliance, regulation and security baked in at every step
- Available 24/7, 365 – rolling deployments can be made with no downtime
- Faster and more accurate – less back office layers, fewer process steps
- Faster to implement.
The very nature of Cloud native applications is being able to break them down into single-function component services that make up an application known as Microservices. Each small service runs in its own process and are independently deployable without compromising the integrity of an application. As a result, you might only need to change one or more distinct services instead of having to redeploy entire applications. This is perfect for adapting propositions or deploying product improvements on an iterative basis, and, faster and cheaper than previously.
Multiple layers of security and configurations change or rotate daily, and fully automated data-based decision-making tools isolate issues or re-route services automatically without the need for intervention. But breaking away from legacy infrastructure to follow a cloud-native technology model requires a change in ways of working and a shift in mindset throughout an organisation. In the new world, products and services are changing rapidly based on customer demand, so being able to adapt and launch new propositions at pace is key.
Form3 is working with many UK and European banks and regulated Fintechs to help them migrate to Cloud Native technology quickly and efficiently and also be culturally ready for the change. Our Cloud-Native, Payments-as-a-Service Platform is designed to be ready to hook into your applications in just a few weeks. It is delivered as a fully managed service from kick-off to full production. We only use best in class technology to ensure that the platform performs really well (check out our continuous status performance live on our website). And of course, we operate across three data centres, the highest level of security currently available.
If you are interested to learn more, don’t forget to visit Form3 at Sibos, 23 -26 September 2019, London.
