Taking a Hybrid Approach to Cloud Migration for Financial Markets

The front, middle, and back offices of the financial markets industry continue to embrace cloud-based applications and services at a rapid rate. It is difficult to execute a hybrid cloud migration between cloud and colocation data centers, and it is difficult to know how to organize a transformation to execute at scale. Having a partner for your move that has solid experience and a methodical approach to migration has advantages. The important takeaways from a recent two-year engagement with a top asset management client are presented here by Deloitte. These insights might speed up corporate portfolio migration to the cloud or data center in the financial services sector as well as in other sectors.

According to a report by PwC and AFME (Association for Financial Markets in Europe), the utilization of cloud technology in capital markets will increase by 30% in 2020. And that increase is probably going to keep going, especially in the aftermath of the worldwide epidemic, which has compelled many businesses to quicken their cloud migration plans.

Of course, the cloud may provide financial firms with several advantages. Cost reduction, particularly through the optimization of infrastructure, is one of the most frequently mentioned. Additional advantages include the speed with which cloud-based services can be deployed, the convenience and improved user experience that the cloud offers, the elasticity and scalability that the cloud offers, the accessibility of DevSecOps environments, and the openness and interoperability of cloud-based applications. Therefore, it's hardly unexpected that businesses are increasingly attempting to profit from these.

But making the switch to the cloud is difficult, especially in the atmosphere of the intricate financial markets. Additionally, getting executive sponsorship is crucial since it helps with the transfer process.

Businesses should be aware of the costs and complexity involved in moving their technology stacks to the cloud, especially if they plan to migrate themselves. To support their analytics, pricing, trading, risk, settlement, and other operational responsibilities, several companies have developed a sophisticated web of infrastructure. Expecting to be able to simply "lift and shift" these functions to the cloud is quite unrealistic.

Establishing a clear plan for your company's proper cloud strategy is a crucial first step in your cloud transformation journey. This entails determining which apps and data should be kept in-house or on-premises, where to utilize public clouds, where to use private clouds, and where to use each. For instance, real-time market data and high-performance trading are dubious choices for the public cloud; but, cloud-hosted systems may be a better fit for data analytics, regulatory reporting, and end-user applications.

However, putting their plan into action doesn't have to be difficult. Working with an infrastructure provider who has already laid the foundation and offers an integrated solution for accessing all necessary endpoints over a single, secure network may substantially speed up the process.

Connection is essential. Firms may quickly implement everything they require, including cloud-based services, managed hosting, and access to major global market hubs, thanks to secure and dependable connectivity to trading partners, counterparties, application service providers, and multi-cloud environments.

By using this strategy, forward-thinking businesses may have the best of both worlds. Businesses may adopt the cloud approach that is best for their operations and their clients when they have a customized cloud environment with unified, secure access to a combination of on-premise, hosted, private cloud, public cloud, and the cloud of cloud infrastructure.

Leveraging a proven migration methodology

To reduce the explosion radius, the target-state data center used best-in-class technological solutions, including improved automation, AWS adoption, higher resilience, and network segmentation. An IT business like TransformHub uses its five-phase, industry-proven migration approach to plan and carry out the move concurrently with data center design and construction. The proposal included moving several important platforms, including third-party goods and mainframe, web, shared services, and trading platforms. With no previous company interruption due to an event, TransformHub has a 99.7% migration success record.

Five lessons to inform migration

There were five major takeaways from the relocation process that other financial services businesses should keep in mind when they start any significant move, whether it's to the cloud or just a different data center.

1. It is standard practice to have an execution structure and master migration schedule. Even though it might seem simple, workload migrations cannot be implemented without a well-defined execution structure and a strategy that is supported by all relevant stakeholder groups. A master migration schedule outlines the order of activities required to move apps with the least amount of disturbance to the company. Building a migration timeline in this engagement requires input from the executive suite and business divisions.
2. Bundling applications is both an art and a science. Stay away from the mega-bundle trap. Like many other industries, the financial services sector had tightly connected platforms and shared services, totalling about 100,000 dependencies. The problem of understanding and mapping relationships while maintaining the integrity of the bundles must be overcome for migration to be successful.
3. Recognize the hazards of migration, and prepare for failure. There is no one-size-fits-all migration strategy, and one particular problem is figuring out an organization's specific risk tolerance and exposure levels. Success depends on understanding the demands and risk profile of the business from all angles.
4. Don't overlook the customer. Remember that business units could be utilizing in-house tools, such as a spreadsheet with macro support, to access backed systems via static IP addresses or other techniques. Re-IP or access control changes might cause certain access methods to fail.
5. Before moving your technology estate, understand it. Few businesses have the level of technological understanding required for relocation. Tribal wisdom is insufficient. Consider your dependencies, networks, and apps.

TransformHub can provide a whole managed hybrid solution. We may provide Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), which includes data center space, servers, racks, electricity, and all the related resources to provide a fully managed service down to the OS level if clients want to maintain control over specific applications and data.

As an alternative, we may offer secure managed connections to all of the main public cloud service providers, including financial institutions, exchanges, and application providers (such as AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, AliCloud, and others). Through the TransformHub network, everything is completely safe and encrypted.

Contact us today to learn more about TransformHub and hybrid cloud services.