How Financial Services Can Maximize the Benefits of Operating in Hybrid Cloud

When it comes to your cloud options, is your financial services organization struggling to decide between the security and control of private cloud or the flexibility and agility of public cloud? What if you didn’t have to choose? What if you could have security, control, flexibility and agility all in one cloud solution?

That is the leading benefit of hybrid cloud. A hybrid cloud model provides a single, unified infrastructure, giving organizations the opportunity to mix on-premises infrastructure with a variety of private and public cloud services, with orchestration between the platforms.

Hybrid cloud provides flexibility, such as retaining some workloads and data in a private, on-premises cloud, while moving others to public cloud services, like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft® Azure® and Google Cloud. For example, an enterprise could use an on-premises private cloud to host sensitive customer credit card data, while leveraging a public cloud provider to host less critical resources, like test and development workloads.

But not just any hybrid cloud solution can meet the unique needs of financial services firms. What many require is a workload-aware hybrid cloud operating model that empowers them to seamlessly shift workloads between public cloud, private cloud, edge computing, third-party systems and on-premises systems.

The ideal solution is a workload-aware hybrid cloud. This option gives you optimum flexibility. Purpose-built hybrid cloud solutions deliver the operational resiliency, data protection and privacy required to meet the most stringent regulatory and reporting regulations, as well as be embedded with enterprise-grade security.

Key benefits of workload-aware hybrid cloud solutions

When you choose a workload-aware hybrid cloud, you gain the benefit of resiliency, innovation support and workload optimization. Here’s how.

1. Build resiliency

Given the highly regulated nature of today’s financial services industry, banks, credit unions and wealth management firms risk significant consequences for non-compliance with regulations. The rules that govern third-party risk management, cybersecurity, digital operations and breach reporting are extensive.

Hybrid cloud resiliency gives you these advantages:

• AI support: AI is at the heart of most cloud transformations today. For instance, by employing AI to analyze the millions of transactions that take place each day, financial firms can flag unusual patterns in real time to mitigate systemic risk.
• Next-generation security: To counter cyberthreats, financial services organizations must continually refine their security posture. This is even more critical as organizations begin adopting AI and cast their eye towards the potential of quantum computing.
• Strong regulatory stance: Hybrid cloud adoption also positions mid-tier financial services companies to meet ancillary regulatory mandates.

2. Ace innovation

Mid-tier financial services companies are no stranger to the industry’s competitive landscape. The rise of digital-first banks has eroded regional client bases and raised customer expectations for flawless user experiences. Fintech disruptors are encroaching on traditional revenue streams, from mobile payments and financing to online investing. The simplicity of switching providers, coupled with a price-first focus, has weakened customer loyalty. This has put banks, credit unions and wealth management firms under unprecedented pressure to boost efficiency, reduce costs and prioritize innovation.

Hybrid cloud innovation support gives you these advantages:

• AI first: Countless financial services firms have already turned to AI, because it can offer an ideal foundation for reimagining the user experience, reducing time-to-market for new products and services and modernizing operational processes.
• Unlock the promise: By integrating data from multiple sources, including the public cloud, private cloud, SaaS applications and edge devices, an AI-infused hybrid cloud positions financial services companies to realize a measurable return on their investments.
• Embrace hybrid: What makes this approach groundbreaking is that it contemplates a fully hybrid operating model in which critical workloads continue to run on core systems within secure and hardened environments, delivering the high resilience and security financial services companies’ demand. At the same time, they can integrate public cloud resources to innovate, experiment and transform

3. Workload optimization

With tightening budgets and rigorous regulatory oversight, there is no leeway for cost overruns or ineffective integrations. To avoid missteps, a deliberate and forward-thinking approach to cloud strategy is essential. It should be one that assesses workloads holistically and employs systems thinking to not only implement the right technologies but also adopt the right processes and activate the right people.

Workload optimization gives you these advantages:

• Become workload-aware: A recent Rackspace Technology® survey revealed that 54% of organizations with mature cloud models prefer a comprehensive workload-by-workload analysis to decide where to host their workloads, while less mature organizations tend to focus only on where to put critical workloads.
• Find balance: Hybrid cloud can deliver an environment that balances scalability, flexibility, security and control.
• Meet geopolitical mandates: Hybrid cloud helps an organization’s data stay resident in an in-country data center exclusively accessible to the organization.

Reaping these advantages requires working with a hybrid cloud provider with experience, know-how and proven credentials. With 11,000 total technical certifications and deep expertise across public, private and hybrid cloud solutions, Rackspace is uniquely positioned to help financial services companies achieve their business goals in a hybrid cloud.

Go deeper to understand why and how to choose a hybrid cloud in your financial services organization. Download our white paper today.