How FinTechs Tap Into Cloud Computing’s Advantages

Source: pymnts.com

FinTech firms are tapping into cloud computing as they harness benefits such as scalability, reduced information technology (IT) costs, business continuity, and technology innovation as well as adoption. To be on the cutting edge, DadeSystems Chief Information Officer Mike Capote told PYMNTS in an interview, the flexibility and agility that comes with the cloud-type model versus a traditional one “is not only advantageous” but also “necessary in today’s market.”

Companies that are not on the cloud are internally hosting technology, which can be a slow and costly arrangement. With the traditional model, enterprises have to go through a procurement process and then act as well as configure servers. Through the cloud, however, companies could simply subscribe to, say, Microsoft Azure’s latest offering and see how it works. They no longer need to pay for system upgrades, new hardware, expert IT staff, energy costs and specialized IT/data center space.

And, with the traditional technology model, companies used to have a number of hard drives. They might go through massive cleanup efforts to salvage space once they became full and also went through the procurement cycle. These firms would then have to purchase additional hard drives and they would buy what they required plus 20 percent extra to accommodate growth. The cloud, however, allows companies such as DadeSystems to only pay for what they need (and not just for storage — for computing power as well). With its technology, Capote said the company is “using that scalability every day.”

Through cloud technology, companies can also take advantage of business continuity benefits. In case of a disaster, IT companies used to fly the team out to another part of the world, and they would take backup tapes with them. They would then restore operations from somewhere else in the world. With cloud computing, however, a company can have primary data in one part of the world. It can also have that information duplicated along with compute power, memory, storage and customer data in another part of the world.

And when it comes to innovation, companies would have to get, say, a 30-day trial to try out new software through a traditional technology model. It would have to buy a server, stand it up, set up the software, and experiment. By contrast, cloud-based services and marketplaces such as Azure or AWS will have technologies automatically integrated into their platforms. As firms like DadeSystems are on those platforms, the company can experiment with technology by just pointing and clicking on a few choices.

The company decided to point, click, and test Kubernetes, for instance, which it now uses through the Microsoft Azure cloud. Through cloud computing, then, FinTech companies can innovate much more efficiently for their customers as a result of only a small initial investment by harnessing the power of flexible technology.