Description
Cloud Computing is the buzzword in technology circles today. It is sometimes compared with the virtualization of computing power, applications and storage, thought of as a model to deploy pay-as-you-go web services or perceived to be similar to grid computing.
1
CLOUD COMPUTING FOR
THE FINANCIAL SERVICES
INDUSTRY
Author: Abhinav Garg
2
CLOUD COMPUTING FOR FINANCIAL SERVICES
3
CONTENTS
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY...........................................................................................................................4
WHAT IS CLOUD COMPUTING?.............................................................................................................4
CHARACTERISTICS OF CLOUD COMPUTING......................................................................................6
KEY CHALLENGES................................................................................................................................. 6
MARKET OPPORTUNITY AND CONSIDERATION FACTORS............................................................... 7
CURRENT ADOPTION............................................................................................................................ 10
WHAT’S AHEAD?.....................................................................................................................................11
SAPIENT CLOUD READINESS APPROACH..........................................................................................12
CONCLUSION .........................................................................................................................................13
WEB REFERENCES................................................................................................................................14
4
CLOUD COMPUTING FOR FINANCIAL SERVICES
Cloud Computing is the buzzword in technology circles today. It is sometimes
compared with the virtualization of computing power, applications and storage,
thought of as a model to deploy pay-as-you-go web services or perceived to be
similar to grid computing. Cloud computing shares characteristics with all of these
technology paradigms, yet it has more to offer.
The purpose of this document is to provide a point of view on how cloud computing
is applicable to the financial services industry and to provide an approach for
adoption by a financial services firm. We start by introducing cloud computing and
its characteristics. Then we outline the common challenges that different financial
services firms have faced while implementing cloud computing.
We also discuss the factors that make cloud computing an attractive option for a
financial services firm, substantiate the advantages of cloud computing by providing
some examples of adoption by financial services firms, and provide our perspective
on the ideal types of financial services systems that should be moved to a cloud.
Finally, we suggest a cloud computing readiness approach, which can be adopted by
firms to make sound decisions around their approach to—and readiness for—cloud
computing.
WHAT IS CLOUD COMPUTING?
The U.S National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) defines cloud
computing as “a pay-per-use model for enabling available, convenient, on-demand
network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g.., network,
servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and
released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This
cloud model promotes availability and is comprised of five key characteristics, three
delivery models and four deployment models.” In other words, cloud computing is a
potent combination of a public utility, such as electricity or telephone, and autonomic
computing. Like a public utility, it has elasticity for scaling up or down, is accessed
through pooled computing resources using a multi-tenant model and can be metered
and billed only for the usage. And like autonomic computing, it’s a self-managing
system of distributed computing resources, adapting to unpredictable changes while
hiding intrinsic complexity from users. Cloud Computing can be delivered through
such delivery models as:
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
5
Software as a Service (SaaS)
• Google Docs– A suite of products that allows you to
create different types of documents, work on them in
real time with other people and store them, along
with other files, online.
• Salesforce.com— A cloud-based Customer
Relationship Management (CRM) platform that
can be used by a firm to connect with customers and
employees.
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
• Microsoft Azure— A platform cloud that helps
developers build, host and scale applications through
Microsoft datacenters.
• Google App Engine— A platform cloud that enables
developers to build and host web applications on the
same systems that power Google applications.
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
• Amazon EC2— An infrastructure cloud web service
that provides resizable compute, storage and
network capacity on the cloud.
• Rackspace— An infrastructure organization that
enables public, private and hybrid cloud hosting.
• NYSE Euronext CMCP— Infrastructure cloud
services offering aimed at NYSE Euronext’s financial
services customers.
Business Process as a Service (BPaaS)
• ADP Employease— An Online business process
services for HR, benefits administration and
outsourcing.
• AMEX Concur— An online business process that
connects travel suppliers and mobile solutions from
around the world to provide advanced travel and
expense functionality.
Data as a Service (DaaS)
• Google Public Data— A public data service that
makes large datasets easy to explore, visualize and
communicate.
• Xignite Capital Markets Data— A platform that
The above cloud services can be delivered through
deployment models, such as:
• Public Cloud— A public cloud is available over the
internet to everyone. The cloud provider manages
and owns everything from operations and facilities to
computing resources. Popular public clouds are
Amazon EC2, Google App Engine and Microsoft
Azure.
• Private Cloud— A private cloud is available only to
trusted users of an organization or group. Everything
in a private cloud can be managed either by the
organization or the cloud provider.
• Community Cloud— A community cloud is
accessible to the members of a larger community
comprised of different organizations or groups, and
where partner organizations and the cloud provider
co-manage everything from operations to facilities.
• Hybrid Cloud— A hybrid cloud is a mix of multiple
public and private clouds and it addresses the
challenges of a pure public or private cloud
environment.
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CLOUD COMPUTING FOR FINANCIAL SERVICES
CHARACTERISTICS OF CLOUD COMPUTING
KEY CHALLENGES
The key characteristics of cloud computing include the
following:
• On-demand self-service— Unilateral provisioning
of such computing resources as server time, storage
or network bandwidth, without requiring human
interaction with service providers.
• Ubiquitous network access— Access to systems
regardless of user location or device (PC, mobile phone,
tablet, etc.).
• Resource pooling— Multi-tenancy that enables
sharing of pooled resources and costs across a
number of users, with different physical and virtual
resources dynamically assigned and reassigned
according to user demand.
• Rapid elasticity— Quick scale up or scale down of
resources through elastic provisioning or the release
of capabilities in near real time.
• Pay per use— Capabilities that are charged using
a metered, fee-for-service or advertising-based
billing model to promote optimization of resource
use. One pays only for the time when the resource
is used.
CHALLENGES
Data
Privacy
Security
Availability
Absense of
Standards
(Vendor
Lock-in)
Compliance
Cloud computing comes with its share of challenges, in terms of security, data privacy, compliance, availability, lack
of standards, etc. These challenges are highlighted more in a regulated and security-sensitive environment, such as
financial services.
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MARKET OPPORTUNITY AND CONSIDERATION FACTORS
The challenges impact financial services firms in the
following ways:
• Firms are apprehensive about their data being
compromised on a public cloud or the monetization
of their customer data by cloud vendors. For
example, traders in a firm would be extremely wary
of placing their proprietary trading strategies in a
cloud, fearing that a competitor on the same cloud
might gain access to them. Similarly, portfolio
managers and risk analysts are apprehensive
about the asset allocation or benchmark rebalancing
strategies of a firm. Since financial services firms
operate in a highly regulated environment, any loss
of customer data or any of the above scenarios could
have reputational implications and lead to a barrage
of lawsuits from customers.
• IT managers are also worried about availability of
applications deployed on a cloud. Cloud computing
A 2010 IDG survey revealed that:
• 6% of CIOs polled felt that cost reduction across the
board was a critical business priority for the future
• 62% felt that optimizing resources and key business
processes was going to be a priority
• 67% saw improving the marketing time for products
and services as critical in the coming years
A financial services firm that heavily relies on IT enabled services can benefit from cloud computing, despite the
objections mentioned above. Perceived cost savings, ease of scaling-in and scaling-out, faster time-to-market for
deploying systems, virtualization of enterprise-wide data as a service, enterprise technology standardization, and
the ability to access data and applications on the move are all critical consideration factors that can drive financial
services firms to adopt cloud computing.
vendors generally provide services on standard
terms, which tend to be for the benefit of vendors,
including limited warranties. Imagine a scenario
in which a cloud provider deletes a customer’s data
or takes down a customer’s application for days or
weeks for breach of contract, such as non-payment.
It would create many problems for a firm. And cloud
outages, like the one at Amazon , further compound
the fear of non-availability.
• Vendor lock-in is another concern. Most cloud
providers provide access to their resources through
proprietary APIs, web interfaces or command line
tools. If a firm wants to shift to a different cloud
vendor, there would be high cost involved to switch
to new interfaces, which might actually negate the
advantages of using the cloud in the first place.
8
CLOUD COMPUTING FOR FINANCIAL SERVICES
Enterprise
technology
Standardization
Data
Virtualization
Perceived
Cost Savings
Scalability
Time to Market
Mobility
Consideration
Factors
Cost Savings: Business agility is determined by the
cost an organization incurs. There are a few
on-demand, self-service-based, and perceptually
inexpensive public cloud computing solutions, that
have served as a wake-up call for IT departments.
Low-cost price plans marketed by public cloud
vendors have encouraged IT departments to become
more familiar with exact costs, resource allocation
models and the variety of cloud models, including
public, private and hybrid. For example, Firm58’s
SaaS billing solution automates fee management,
commissions and payouts for trading firms, broker
and dealers, which helps those firms free up
resources that can be leveraged for more strategic
initiatives. Billing is a non-core process for financial
services firms, and outsourcing it to a less expensive
third-party allows them to channel their funds into
core technology-based functions. Imagine achieving
cost benefits by moving one of those core technology-
based processes to a cloud, like NASDAQ did for its
Market Replay application. It’s a rich client
application, which provides NASDAQ-validated replay
and analysis of stock market activity. Using Amazon
Simple Storage Service (S3) to restore all historical
data, the application is an inexpensive and extremely
scalable storage solution for NASDAQ, which
generates gigabytes of trading data every day.
Scalability: In addition to cost savings, NASDAQ,
with billions of text files for countless number of
users, also benefited from increased data scalability
without sacrificing performance. If well designed
cloud solutions enable firms to meet user
demands and scale quickly, dynamic provisioning
of computing resources, whether it is CPUs,
memory or IP addresses, will save business users
and IT professionals from engineering the
systems for peak loads. To stay compliant with
today’s regulations around risk management
processes, financial services firms need multiple
times the computing power for risk modeling
than they did before the financial crisis of 2008-09.
And that’s why firms are looking at cloud-based
grid solutions. Normally, to run these risk
simulations and calculate analytics indicators,
computing power is heavily required only at certain
times of a day, leaving resources idle for the rest of
the time. If shared computing resources could be
made available to such processes based on when
they are run and the data load, it could lead to
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instances of almost zero unutilized computing
power. Firms can tackle the challenges of security
and data privacy by creating a hybrid cloud where
sensitive data can reside on a private cloud and
computing power can be available on a public cloud.
These private and public clouds can be combined
in a virtual private network to create a single
scalable hybrid cloud.
Time to market: With cloud computing, time to
market can be reduced from months to weeks or
days, depending on the size of a firm. A self-service
based, on-demand and real-time monitored cloud
helps by:
• Eliminating procurement delays for computing
hardware and software
• Expediting computing power for when existing
applications need to handle peak loads
• Eliminating the upfront capital and time investment
for procuring hardware for proof of concept work or
rapid application development
Data Virtualization: Virtualization of data is not a
new concept. In fact, extraction, transformation and
loading (ETL)-based business intelligence systems
have been around for a while. Data virtualization
is the integration of data from multiple and
disparate sources across the enterprise or external
sources for the on-demand consumption by a wide
range of applications in a virtualized manner. The
Dodd-Frank Act mandates a 360° view of risk and
performance across all asset classes and portfolios
within a firm, enforces more compliance and
regulatory reporting for financial services firms, and
warrants a way to value positions and calculate
variation margins for OTC derivatives collateral
posting. These mandates require firms to have
a data virtualization strategy in place, which can be
used to provide a single source of reference data,
such as security master data, single view of
positions and holdings, book and counterparty
data, etc. Also, risk and analytics calculations rely
on many different types and sources of data,
including relational, semi-structured XML,
dimensional and the new Big Data types.
Leveraging large volumes of data from such
sources makes query performance a critical
success factor. Energy firms can also benefit from
data virtualization because they require energy data
from smart meters.
When that data is combined with historical data from
other commercial sources, it can enable those
firms to identify user energy consumption patterns
and forecast for the future accordingly. Combining
such disparate data from public and private domains
is a challenge. Therefore, accessing that data from
a single virtual source would drive scores of data
consolidation and mash ups within energy firms.
Enterprise Technology Standardization:
Oftentimes, there is a lack of standardization in terms
of technology and architecture approaches used by
different groups within a firm. The solutions might
be similar in nature, but application environments,
with individual components and configurations, are
considerably different. Standardizing these
technology and architecture approaches would
reduce duplication of effort. Additionally, different
units of cloud computing infrastructure, such as
virtual machine images, architecture patterns and
templates, would allow teams to create standardized
environments. A cloud would also enforce
development lifecycle standardization across
different teams—once they start accessing it through
the same interfaces.
Mobility: Many of today’s business users want
to access risk and analytics reports, performance
attribution metrics and trading summaries while they
are on the move. They see the advantages of
accessing their emails on their smart phones
and tablets, anywhere and anytime. Likewise, they
want similar interfaces for financial services-specific
applications. And since a cloud enables users to
access systems and infrastructure using a web
browser or customized clients regardless of location
and time, development of such interfaces has started
taking shape. Some financial services players have
ventured into this area by developing iPhone, Android
and iPad interfaces for their account management
applications, CRM tools and data research and
reporting applications.
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CLOUD COMPUTING FOR FINANCIAL SERVICES
CURRENT ADOPTION
Cloud computing has caused more debate than many other recent technological advancements. Regardless, there
has been a tremendous rise in its adoption by financial services firms over the last couple of years. Some prominent
examples include:
NYSE Euronext Capital Markets Community
Platform:
Recently, NYSE Euronext launched a PaaS
community cloud service for the financial services
industry, aimed at brokers, dealers, hedge funds,
and other market makers. The platform has been
set up to host customer applications and services,
such as electronic trading, market data analysis,
algorithmic testing and regulatory reporting.
The infrastructure consists mainly of storage and
virtualization tools from EMC and VMware, running
on Xeon-powered blade servers.
NASDAQ OMX Data on-demand: This SaaS cloud
service, built with the support of Xignite, provides
easy and flexible access to massive amounts of
historical level 1 tick data. It’s a web application that
allows users to purchase data online and access it
using an application programming interface (API) or
as plain text files.
CME Clearport OTC Data on-demand: This
on-demand SaaS web service is also built on top of
the Xignite platform and offers access to end-of-
day OTC settlement, volume and open interest data
to support markets available through CME
Clearport
®
.
I-Banks using cloud for risk analysis and non-core
processes: Now a part of Bank of America, Merrill
Lynch used IBM iDataPlex servers as part of an IaaS
strategy to build and evaluate risk analysis programs.
The servers turn many separate computers into a
pool of shared resources, i.e., a cloud. Morgan
Stanley uses PaaS cloud vendor Force.com for
its recruiting applications and has extensive cloud
penetration in analytics and strategy.
Gridglo real-time energy apps: The startup,
Gridglo, is developing SaaS services to sell energy
information to utilities. It is mining energy
consumption data from smart meters and combining
it with data from other sources, such as real estate,
weather and demographic data, to provide tools for
energy forecasting, demand response analytics and
energy credit scoring for categorizing different types
of consumers, along with a financial risk energy tool.
Microsoft Azure DataMarket for the Energy
Industry:
Microsoft DataMarket SaaS cloud services enable
the discovery, exploration and consumption of data
from trusted public domains and commercial data
sources, such as demographics, health, location-
based services, real estate, weather, transportation,
navigation, etc. It also includes visualizations and
analytics to enable insight from that data. All this
data can be incorporated into software applications
for any device through a common API. Different
players in the energy industry are using this
platform to create energy forecasting and
analytics applications.
11
WHAT’S AHEAD?
Risk analytics calculation: Applications that
calculate such analytics as cost of trade, current
value, yields, Greeks, etc., at the level of a single
security, position or portfolio are perfect candidates
for a grid-based cloud. A cloud-based grid service
can easily scale up or scale down depending on
the data load. What’s more, the applications can
be seamlessly deployed on multiple grid nodes,
reducing maintenance overhead. Also, since such
applications only run for specific durations,
dedicated hardware leads to unutilized CPU cycles,
which can be optimized by a grid-based cloud.
The whole solution can be implemented on a private
cloud where existing computing power can be
virtualized and made available as an on-
demand service.
Performance attribution: Performance attribution
provides a framework for examining the relative
performance of a fund versus its benchmark. It is a
methodology that quantifies the success or added
value of an investment strategy. Attribution allows
investment managers to identify the factors of
the investment process that contributed (positively
or negatively) to the performance levels highlighted
by performance measurement. Hence, these data-
intensive processes need access to a huge amount
of historical data for correctly calculating metrics.
Performance attribution or benchmark rebalancing
applications run at specific times of a day, like the
analytics calculation processes. As such, these
are ideal candidates to be deployed on a cloud, able
to optimize the usage of available computing power
and the scale-in and scale-out benefits of an
existing grid.
Trade matching and reconciliation: A trade
matching process gets trade data from multiple
brokers and counterparties and then reconciles it.
This process is prone to high volumes during times
of peak trading. The solution is to create a hybrid
cloud where the reconciliation process can run on a
public cloud for scalability and the data can reside on
dedicated database servers in a private cloud. The
data from multiple brokers and counterparties can be
pushed to the public cloud, which can then be
streamed to the private cloud. This can also help
avoid creating separate connectivity to new partners
and maintaining all those connections
simultaneously.
Reference data virtualization: Various types of
reference data, such as security master data,
positions data, holdings and book data, broker and
counterparty data, etc., reside in multiple kinds
of data sources. These data sources can be internal
databases, file systems or external feeds. When an
application needs to access data from many sources,
it can be a challenge to devise strategies that connect
those data sources and consolidate and aggregate
the data within the application for specific needs.
The recommended solution is to build a data
virtualization layer that seamlessly federates these
different data sources and provides different ways to
access the single virtual data source. The layer
should be flexible enough to mash up different
streams of data according to the requirements of
a particular application. Similar to the reference
data virtualization layer, a transactional or
operational data virtualization layer can be created
to support risk management, financial analysis
and compliance reporting. The goal is to make all
data available through centralized data services.
There are countless opportunities for financial services firms to leverage the benefits of cloud computing by
migrating a variety of applications to the cloud. Non-core applications and such business processes as recruiting,
billing and organization-wide travel management can—and should—easily move to the cloud. A number of
infrastructure operations, such as data center management, data storage and disaster recovery, should also
move to a cloud after a thorough evaluation of different vendors offerings and based on the flexibility of cloud
vendors in documenting contracts. Although very few firms are currently using cloud computing for their core
applications, different hosting architectures provided by IaaS cloud providers and new avenues in the community
and hybrid cloud space, will drive more firms to move their core applications to the cloud. In fact, core solutions,
such as batch processes running throughout the day, analytics and reporting applications, are perfect candidates.
A few scenarios that would be ideal for a cloud deployment include:
12
CLOUD COMPUTING FOR FINANCIAL SERVICES
SAPIENT CLOUD READINESS APPROACH
Cloud computing has caused more debate than many other recent technological advancements. Regardless, there
has been a tremendous rise in its adoption by financial services firms over the last couple of years. Some prominent
examples include:
Phase I—Evaluate
Developing a successful cloud strategy starts with a
thorough evaluation of current business processes
and applications and identifying those that can be
moved to a cloud. The processes and applications
should be evaluated using a balanced scorecard.
The identified processes typically show
characteristics similar to the applications
documented in the section above. The balanced
scorecard uses parameters, such as privacy
requirements when the information is stored on a
cloud, peak load hours, architecture constraints and
such legal requirements as the physical location of
hardware, which will decide applicable legal
jurisdiction and laws of country, etc.
Phase II—Prototype
In the Prototype phase, particular processes are
selected and the type of deployment model, including
public, private or a hybrid cloud, is decided. Plus,
strategies for storing data with different security
requirements and complexities are developed. Some
of the key decisions focus on where the most
sensitive datashould be located and how less-
sensitive data will be processed. This phase also
includes the evaluation of cloud vendors based on
data and architectural parameters. Proper
assessment of cloud vendors with respect to their
focus on security, data confidentiality and availability
are completed. Choosing the right vendor involves
understanding what each one can offer and how their
offerings align with the firm’s requirements.
Phase III— Implement
Once the deployment model is decided and cloud
vendors are chosen, the implementation phase
begins. In this phase, applications are deployed on
cloud. Several factors are kept in mind during this
phase, including migration and cutover planning, as
well as the adoption and operational management of
the new process.
Phase IV— Measure
Finally, an organization should spend considerable
time measuring the ROI achieved and fine-tuning the
adoption process. In this phase, ROI is measured
considering the objectives and feedback is collected
from end users. The output of this phase is fed back
into the evaluation process to fine-tune the next
roll-out.
• Identify
development
model
• Evaluate
vendors
• Develop
proof of
concepts
• Identify
development
model
•
Evaluate
vendors
•
Develop
proof of
concepts
• Identify
processes
• Evaluate for
application
security and
data privacy
EVALUATE PROTOTYPE MEASURE MEASURE
• Integrate
applications
• Plan for
Cutover
• Process
Adoption
• Measure ROI
• Compare
metrics
before and
after
adoption
13
CONCLUSION
Continued growth of cloud computing within the financial services industry will require vendors and firms
to overcome its challenges together. The NYSE Euronext community cloud paves the way for these types of
collaborative ventures in the future, where multiple firms will have a proportionate stake. And in the areas
where data secrecy is more important than collaboration, hybrid clouds with the appropriate allocation of data
and applications are recommended.
Cloud Computing is a promising paradigm for delivering computing utilities as services. Just as personal
computers and servers shook up the world of mainframes and minicomputers, or as smartphones and tablets
revolutionized the mobile commerce industry, cloud computing is bringing similar far-reaching changes to the
licensing and provisioning of infrastructure and to methodologies for application development, deployment
and delivery. Some firms have already realized the benefits of cloud computing, which include scalability, cost
savings and time to market. Firms that are still looking to leverage the cloud should begin by moving non-
revenue generating and non-core systems to the cloud. And, they should consider developing a comprehensive
cloud strategy to move core applications to the cloud.
Since major shifts in technology can take years to make an impact, the migration of core financial services
applications to the cloud might take some time. Using Sapient’s Cloud Readiness Approach, financial
services firms can meet the technical challenges of cloud computing and build a comprehensive and
effective cloud strategy.
14
CLOUD COMPUTING FOR FINANCIAL SERVICES
WEB REFERENCES
[1] http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2390702,00.asp#fbid=lg3dX9bAIFr
[2] http://www.firm58.com
[3] http://www.infoq.com/articles/nasdaq-case-study-air-and-s3
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodd%E2%80%93Frank_Wall_Street_Reform_and_Consumer_Protection_Act
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_data
[6] http://www.nyse.com/press/1306838249812.html
[7] http://www.finextra.com/news/fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=22496
[8] http://www.xignite.com/News/PressRelease.aspx?articleid=207
[9] http://www.finextra.com/news/fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=19113
[10] http://www.wallstreetandtech.com/it-infrastructure/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212700913
[11] http://gigaom.com/cleantech/gridglo-mines-big-data-for-real-time-energy-apps
[12] http://www.hpcinthecloud.com/hpccloud/2011-03-21/clouds_set_to_make_smart_grids_smarter.html
About Sapient Global Markets
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For more information, visit sapientglobalmarkets.com.
© 2011 Sapient Corporation.
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EQUITY DERIVATIVES STANDARDISATION: A Critical Element in Curbing Systemic Risk
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doc_960356810.pdf
Cloud Computing is the buzzword in technology circles today. It is sometimes compared with the virtualization of computing power, applications and storage, thought of as a model to deploy pay-as-you-go web services or perceived to be similar to grid computing.
1
CLOUD COMPUTING FOR
THE FINANCIAL SERVICES
INDUSTRY
Author: Abhinav Garg
2
CLOUD COMPUTING FOR FINANCIAL SERVICES
3
CONTENTS
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY...........................................................................................................................4
WHAT IS CLOUD COMPUTING?.............................................................................................................4
CHARACTERISTICS OF CLOUD COMPUTING......................................................................................6
KEY CHALLENGES................................................................................................................................. 6
MARKET OPPORTUNITY AND CONSIDERATION FACTORS............................................................... 7
CURRENT ADOPTION............................................................................................................................ 10
WHAT’S AHEAD?.....................................................................................................................................11
SAPIENT CLOUD READINESS APPROACH..........................................................................................12
CONCLUSION .........................................................................................................................................13
WEB REFERENCES................................................................................................................................14
4
CLOUD COMPUTING FOR FINANCIAL SERVICES
Cloud Computing is the buzzword in technology circles today. It is sometimes
compared with the virtualization of computing power, applications and storage,
thought of as a model to deploy pay-as-you-go web services or perceived to be
similar to grid computing. Cloud computing shares characteristics with all of these
technology paradigms, yet it has more to offer.
The purpose of this document is to provide a point of view on how cloud computing
is applicable to the financial services industry and to provide an approach for
adoption by a financial services firm. We start by introducing cloud computing and
its characteristics. Then we outline the common challenges that different financial
services firms have faced while implementing cloud computing.
We also discuss the factors that make cloud computing an attractive option for a
financial services firm, substantiate the advantages of cloud computing by providing
some examples of adoption by financial services firms, and provide our perspective
on the ideal types of financial services systems that should be moved to a cloud.
Finally, we suggest a cloud computing readiness approach, which can be adopted by
firms to make sound decisions around their approach to—and readiness for—cloud
computing.
WHAT IS CLOUD COMPUTING?
The U.S National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) defines cloud
computing as “a pay-per-use model for enabling available, convenient, on-demand
network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g.., network,
servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and
released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This
cloud model promotes availability and is comprised of five key characteristics, three
delivery models and four deployment models.” In other words, cloud computing is a
potent combination of a public utility, such as electricity or telephone, and autonomic
computing. Like a public utility, it has elasticity for scaling up or down, is accessed
through pooled computing resources using a multi-tenant model and can be metered
and billed only for the usage. And like autonomic computing, it’s a self-managing
system of distributed computing resources, adapting to unpredictable changes while
hiding intrinsic complexity from users. Cloud Computing can be delivered through
such delivery models as:
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
5
Software as a Service (SaaS)
• Google Docs– A suite of products that allows you to
create different types of documents, work on them in
real time with other people and store them, along
with other files, online.
• Salesforce.com— A cloud-based Customer
Relationship Management (CRM) platform that
can be used by a firm to connect with customers and
employees.
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
• Microsoft Azure— A platform cloud that helps
developers build, host and scale applications through
Microsoft datacenters.
• Google App Engine— A platform cloud that enables
developers to build and host web applications on the
same systems that power Google applications.
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
• Amazon EC2— An infrastructure cloud web service
that provides resizable compute, storage and
network capacity on the cloud.
• Rackspace— An infrastructure organization that
enables public, private and hybrid cloud hosting.
• NYSE Euronext CMCP— Infrastructure cloud
services offering aimed at NYSE Euronext’s financial
services customers.
Business Process as a Service (BPaaS)
• ADP Employease— An Online business process
services for HR, benefits administration and
outsourcing.
• AMEX Concur— An online business process that
connects travel suppliers and mobile solutions from
around the world to provide advanced travel and
expense functionality.
Data as a Service (DaaS)
• Google Public Data— A public data service that
makes large datasets easy to explore, visualize and
communicate.
• Xignite Capital Markets Data— A platform that
The above cloud services can be delivered through
deployment models, such as:
• Public Cloud— A public cloud is available over the
internet to everyone. The cloud provider manages
and owns everything from operations and facilities to
computing resources. Popular public clouds are
Amazon EC2, Google App Engine and Microsoft
Azure.
• Private Cloud— A private cloud is available only to
trusted users of an organization or group. Everything
in a private cloud can be managed either by the
organization or the cloud provider.
• Community Cloud— A community cloud is
accessible to the members of a larger community
comprised of different organizations or groups, and
where partner organizations and the cloud provider
co-manage everything from operations to facilities.
• Hybrid Cloud— A hybrid cloud is a mix of multiple
public and private clouds and it addresses the
challenges of a pure public or private cloud
environment.
6
CLOUD COMPUTING FOR FINANCIAL SERVICES
CHARACTERISTICS OF CLOUD COMPUTING
KEY CHALLENGES
The key characteristics of cloud computing include the
following:
• On-demand self-service— Unilateral provisioning
of such computing resources as server time, storage
or network bandwidth, without requiring human
interaction with service providers.
• Ubiquitous network access— Access to systems
regardless of user location or device (PC, mobile phone,
tablet, etc.).
• Resource pooling— Multi-tenancy that enables
sharing of pooled resources and costs across a
number of users, with different physical and virtual
resources dynamically assigned and reassigned
according to user demand.
• Rapid elasticity— Quick scale up or scale down of
resources through elastic provisioning or the release
of capabilities in near real time.
• Pay per use— Capabilities that are charged using
a metered, fee-for-service or advertising-based
billing model to promote optimization of resource
use. One pays only for the time when the resource
is used.
CHALLENGES
Data
Privacy
Security
Availability
Absense of
Standards
(Vendor
Lock-in)
Compliance
Cloud computing comes with its share of challenges, in terms of security, data privacy, compliance, availability, lack
of standards, etc. These challenges are highlighted more in a regulated and security-sensitive environment, such as
financial services.
7
MARKET OPPORTUNITY AND CONSIDERATION FACTORS
The challenges impact financial services firms in the
following ways:
• Firms are apprehensive about their data being
compromised on a public cloud or the monetization
of their customer data by cloud vendors. For
example, traders in a firm would be extremely wary
of placing their proprietary trading strategies in a
cloud, fearing that a competitor on the same cloud
might gain access to them. Similarly, portfolio
managers and risk analysts are apprehensive
about the asset allocation or benchmark rebalancing
strategies of a firm. Since financial services firms
operate in a highly regulated environment, any loss
of customer data or any of the above scenarios could
have reputational implications and lead to a barrage
of lawsuits from customers.
• IT managers are also worried about availability of
applications deployed on a cloud. Cloud computing
A 2010 IDG survey revealed that:
• 6% of CIOs polled felt that cost reduction across the
board was a critical business priority for the future
• 62% felt that optimizing resources and key business
processes was going to be a priority
• 67% saw improving the marketing time for products
and services as critical in the coming years
A financial services firm that heavily relies on IT enabled services can benefit from cloud computing, despite the
objections mentioned above. Perceived cost savings, ease of scaling-in and scaling-out, faster time-to-market for
deploying systems, virtualization of enterprise-wide data as a service, enterprise technology standardization, and
the ability to access data and applications on the move are all critical consideration factors that can drive financial
services firms to adopt cloud computing.
vendors generally provide services on standard
terms, which tend to be for the benefit of vendors,
including limited warranties. Imagine a scenario
in which a cloud provider deletes a customer’s data
or takes down a customer’s application for days or
weeks for breach of contract, such as non-payment.
It would create many problems for a firm. And cloud
outages, like the one at Amazon , further compound
the fear of non-availability.
• Vendor lock-in is another concern. Most cloud
providers provide access to their resources through
proprietary APIs, web interfaces or command line
tools. If a firm wants to shift to a different cloud
vendor, there would be high cost involved to switch
to new interfaces, which might actually negate the
advantages of using the cloud in the first place.
8
CLOUD COMPUTING FOR FINANCIAL SERVICES
Enterprise
technology
Standardization
Data
Virtualization
Perceived
Cost Savings
Scalability
Time to Market
Mobility
Consideration
Factors
Cost Savings: Business agility is determined by the
cost an organization incurs. There are a few
on-demand, self-service-based, and perceptually
inexpensive public cloud computing solutions, that
have served as a wake-up call for IT departments.
Low-cost price plans marketed by public cloud
vendors have encouraged IT departments to become
more familiar with exact costs, resource allocation
models and the variety of cloud models, including
public, private and hybrid. For example, Firm58’s
SaaS billing solution automates fee management,
commissions and payouts for trading firms, broker
and dealers, which helps those firms free up
resources that can be leveraged for more strategic
initiatives. Billing is a non-core process for financial
services firms, and outsourcing it to a less expensive
third-party allows them to channel their funds into
core technology-based functions. Imagine achieving
cost benefits by moving one of those core technology-
based processes to a cloud, like NASDAQ did for its
Market Replay application. It’s a rich client
application, which provides NASDAQ-validated replay
and analysis of stock market activity. Using Amazon
Simple Storage Service (S3) to restore all historical
data, the application is an inexpensive and extremely
scalable storage solution for NASDAQ, which
generates gigabytes of trading data every day.
Scalability: In addition to cost savings, NASDAQ,
with billions of text files for countless number of
users, also benefited from increased data scalability
without sacrificing performance. If well designed
cloud solutions enable firms to meet user
demands and scale quickly, dynamic provisioning
of computing resources, whether it is CPUs,
memory or IP addresses, will save business users
and IT professionals from engineering the
systems for peak loads. To stay compliant with
today’s regulations around risk management
processes, financial services firms need multiple
times the computing power for risk modeling
than they did before the financial crisis of 2008-09.
And that’s why firms are looking at cloud-based
grid solutions. Normally, to run these risk
simulations and calculate analytics indicators,
computing power is heavily required only at certain
times of a day, leaving resources idle for the rest of
the time. If shared computing resources could be
made available to such processes based on when
they are run and the data load, it could lead to
9
instances of almost zero unutilized computing
power. Firms can tackle the challenges of security
and data privacy by creating a hybrid cloud where
sensitive data can reside on a private cloud and
computing power can be available on a public cloud.
These private and public clouds can be combined
in a virtual private network to create a single
scalable hybrid cloud.
Time to market: With cloud computing, time to
market can be reduced from months to weeks or
days, depending on the size of a firm. A self-service
based, on-demand and real-time monitored cloud
helps by:
• Eliminating procurement delays for computing
hardware and software
• Expediting computing power for when existing
applications need to handle peak loads
• Eliminating the upfront capital and time investment
for procuring hardware for proof of concept work or
rapid application development
Data Virtualization: Virtualization of data is not a
new concept. In fact, extraction, transformation and
loading (ETL)-based business intelligence systems
have been around for a while. Data virtualization
is the integration of data from multiple and
disparate sources across the enterprise or external
sources for the on-demand consumption by a wide
range of applications in a virtualized manner. The
Dodd-Frank Act mandates a 360° view of risk and
performance across all asset classes and portfolios
within a firm, enforces more compliance and
regulatory reporting for financial services firms, and
warrants a way to value positions and calculate
variation margins for OTC derivatives collateral
posting. These mandates require firms to have
a data virtualization strategy in place, which can be
used to provide a single source of reference data,
such as security master data, single view of
positions and holdings, book and counterparty
data, etc. Also, risk and analytics calculations rely
on many different types and sources of data,
including relational, semi-structured XML,
dimensional and the new Big Data types.
Leveraging large volumes of data from such
sources makes query performance a critical
success factor. Energy firms can also benefit from
data virtualization because they require energy data
from smart meters.
When that data is combined with historical data from
other commercial sources, it can enable those
firms to identify user energy consumption patterns
and forecast for the future accordingly. Combining
such disparate data from public and private domains
is a challenge. Therefore, accessing that data from
a single virtual source would drive scores of data
consolidation and mash ups within energy firms.
Enterprise Technology Standardization:
Oftentimes, there is a lack of standardization in terms
of technology and architecture approaches used by
different groups within a firm. The solutions might
be similar in nature, but application environments,
with individual components and configurations, are
considerably different. Standardizing these
technology and architecture approaches would
reduce duplication of effort. Additionally, different
units of cloud computing infrastructure, such as
virtual machine images, architecture patterns and
templates, would allow teams to create standardized
environments. A cloud would also enforce
development lifecycle standardization across
different teams—once they start accessing it through
the same interfaces.
Mobility: Many of today’s business users want
to access risk and analytics reports, performance
attribution metrics and trading summaries while they
are on the move. They see the advantages of
accessing their emails on their smart phones
and tablets, anywhere and anytime. Likewise, they
want similar interfaces for financial services-specific
applications. And since a cloud enables users to
access systems and infrastructure using a web
browser or customized clients regardless of location
and time, development of such interfaces has started
taking shape. Some financial services players have
ventured into this area by developing iPhone, Android
and iPad interfaces for their account management
applications, CRM tools and data research and
reporting applications.
10
CLOUD COMPUTING FOR FINANCIAL SERVICES
CURRENT ADOPTION
Cloud computing has caused more debate than many other recent technological advancements. Regardless, there
has been a tremendous rise in its adoption by financial services firms over the last couple of years. Some prominent
examples include:
NYSE Euronext Capital Markets Community
Platform:
Recently, NYSE Euronext launched a PaaS
community cloud service for the financial services
industry, aimed at brokers, dealers, hedge funds,
and other market makers. The platform has been
set up to host customer applications and services,
such as electronic trading, market data analysis,
algorithmic testing and regulatory reporting.
The infrastructure consists mainly of storage and
virtualization tools from EMC and VMware, running
on Xeon-powered blade servers.
NASDAQ OMX Data on-demand: This SaaS cloud
service, built with the support of Xignite, provides
easy and flexible access to massive amounts of
historical level 1 tick data. It’s a web application that
allows users to purchase data online and access it
using an application programming interface (API) or
as plain text files.
CME Clearport OTC Data on-demand: This
on-demand SaaS web service is also built on top of
the Xignite platform and offers access to end-of-
day OTC settlement, volume and open interest data
to support markets available through CME
Clearport
®
.
I-Banks using cloud for risk analysis and non-core
processes: Now a part of Bank of America, Merrill
Lynch used IBM iDataPlex servers as part of an IaaS
strategy to build and evaluate risk analysis programs.
The servers turn many separate computers into a
pool of shared resources, i.e., a cloud. Morgan
Stanley uses PaaS cloud vendor Force.com for
its recruiting applications and has extensive cloud
penetration in analytics and strategy.
Gridglo real-time energy apps: The startup,
Gridglo, is developing SaaS services to sell energy
information to utilities. It is mining energy
consumption data from smart meters and combining
it with data from other sources, such as real estate,
weather and demographic data, to provide tools for
energy forecasting, demand response analytics and
energy credit scoring for categorizing different types
of consumers, along with a financial risk energy tool.
Microsoft Azure DataMarket for the Energy
Industry:
Microsoft DataMarket SaaS cloud services enable
the discovery, exploration and consumption of data
from trusted public domains and commercial data
sources, such as demographics, health, location-
based services, real estate, weather, transportation,
navigation, etc. It also includes visualizations and
analytics to enable insight from that data. All this
data can be incorporated into software applications
for any device through a common API. Different
players in the energy industry are using this
platform to create energy forecasting and
analytics applications.
11
WHAT’S AHEAD?
Risk analytics calculation: Applications that
calculate such analytics as cost of trade, current
value, yields, Greeks, etc., at the level of a single
security, position or portfolio are perfect candidates
for a grid-based cloud. A cloud-based grid service
can easily scale up or scale down depending on
the data load. What’s more, the applications can
be seamlessly deployed on multiple grid nodes,
reducing maintenance overhead. Also, since such
applications only run for specific durations,
dedicated hardware leads to unutilized CPU cycles,
which can be optimized by a grid-based cloud.
The whole solution can be implemented on a private
cloud where existing computing power can be
virtualized and made available as an on-
demand service.
Performance attribution: Performance attribution
provides a framework for examining the relative
performance of a fund versus its benchmark. It is a
methodology that quantifies the success or added
value of an investment strategy. Attribution allows
investment managers to identify the factors of
the investment process that contributed (positively
or negatively) to the performance levels highlighted
by performance measurement. Hence, these data-
intensive processes need access to a huge amount
of historical data for correctly calculating metrics.
Performance attribution or benchmark rebalancing
applications run at specific times of a day, like the
analytics calculation processes. As such, these
are ideal candidates to be deployed on a cloud, able
to optimize the usage of available computing power
and the scale-in and scale-out benefits of an
existing grid.
Trade matching and reconciliation: A trade
matching process gets trade data from multiple
brokers and counterparties and then reconciles it.
This process is prone to high volumes during times
of peak trading. The solution is to create a hybrid
cloud where the reconciliation process can run on a
public cloud for scalability and the data can reside on
dedicated database servers in a private cloud. The
data from multiple brokers and counterparties can be
pushed to the public cloud, which can then be
streamed to the private cloud. This can also help
avoid creating separate connectivity to new partners
and maintaining all those connections
simultaneously.
Reference data virtualization: Various types of
reference data, such as security master data,
positions data, holdings and book data, broker and
counterparty data, etc., reside in multiple kinds
of data sources. These data sources can be internal
databases, file systems or external feeds. When an
application needs to access data from many sources,
it can be a challenge to devise strategies that connect
those data sources and consolidate and aggregate
the data within the application for specific needs.
The recommended solution is to build a data
virtualization layer that seamlessly federates these
different data sources and provides different ways to
access the single virtual data source. The layer
should be flexible enough to mash up different
streams of data according to the requirements of
a particular application. Similar to the reference
data virtualization layer, a transactional or
operational data virtualization layer can be created
to support risk management, financial analysis
and compliance reporting. The goal is to make all
data available through centralized data services.
There are countless opportunities for financial services firms to leverage the benefits of cloud computing by
migrating a variety of applications to the cloud. Non-core applications and such business processes as recruiting,
billing and organization-wide travel management can—and should—easily move to the cloud. A number of
infrastructure operations, such as data center management, data storage and disaster recovery, should also
move to a cloud after a thorough evaluation of different vendors offerings and based on the flexibility of cloud
vendors in documenting contracts. Although very few firms are currently using cloud computing for their core
applications, different hosting architectures provided by IaaS cloud providers and new avenues in the community
and hybrid cloud space, will drive more firms to move their core applications to the cloud. In fact, core solutions,
such as batch processes running throughout the day, analytics and reporting applications, are perfect candidates.
A few scenarios that would be ideal for a cloud deployment include:
12
CLOUD COMPUTING FOR FINANCIAL SERVICES
SAPIENT CLOUD READINESS APPROACH
Cloud computing has caused more debate than many other recent technological advancements. Regardless, there
has been a tremendous rise in its adoption by financial services firms over the last couple of years. Some prominent
examples include:
Phase I—Evaluate
Developing a successful cloud strategy starts with a
thorough evaluation of current business processes
and applications and identifying those that can be
moved to a cloud. The processes and applications
should be evaluated using a balanced scorecard.
The identified processes typically show
characteristics similar to the applications
documented in the section above. The balanced
scorecard uses parameters, such as privacy
requirements when the information is stored on a
cloud, peak load hours, architecture constraints and
such legal requirements as the physical location of
hardware, which will decide applicable legal
jurisdiction and laws of country, etc.
Phase II—Prototype
In the Prototype phase, particular processes are
selected and the type of deployment model, including
public, private or a hybrid cloud, is decided. Plus,
strategies for storing data with different security
requirements and complexities are developed. Some
of the key decisions focus on where the most
sensitive datashould be located and how less-
sensitive data will be processed. This phase also
includes the evaluation of cloud vendors based on
data and architectural parameters. Proper
assessment of cloud vendors with respect to their
focus on security, data confidentiality and availability
are completed. Choosing the right vendor involves
understanding what each one can offer and how their
offerings align with the firm’s requirements.
Phase III— Implement
Once the deployment model is decided and cloud
vendors are chosen, the implementation phase
begins. In this phase, applications are deployed on
cloud. Several factors are kept in mind during this
phase, including migration and cutover planning, as
well as the adoption and operational management of
the new process.
Phase IV— Measure
Finally, an organization should spend considerable
time measuring the ROI achieved and fine-tuning the
adoption process. In this phase, ROI is measured
considering the objectives and feedback is collected
from end users. The output of this phase is fed back
into the evaluation process to fine-tune the next
roll-out.
• Identify
development
model
• Evaluate
vendors
• Develop
proof of
concepts
• Identify
development
model
•
Evaluate
vendors
•
Develop
proof of
concepts
• Identify
processes
• Evaluate for
application
security and
data privacy
EVALUATE PROTOTYPE MEASURE MEASURE
• Integrate
applications
• Plan for
Cutover
• Process
Adoption
• Measure ROI
• Compare
metrics
before and
after
adoption
13
CONCLUSION
Continued growth of cloud computing within the financial services industry will require vendors and firms
to overcome its challenges together. The NYSE Euronext community cloud paves the way for these types of
collaborative ventures in the future, where multiple firms will have a proportionate stake. And in the areas
where data secrecy is more important than collaboration, hybrid clouds with the appropriate allocation of data
and applications are recommended.
Cloud Computing is a promising paradigm for delivering computing utilities as services. Just as personal
computers and servers shook up the world of mainframes and minicomputers, or as smartphones and tablets
revolutionized the mobile commerce industry, cloud computing is bringing similar far-reaching changes to the
licensing and provisioning of infrastructure and to methodologies for application development, deployment
and delivery. Some firms have already realized the benefits of cloud computing, which include scalability, cost
savings and time to market. Firms that are still looking to leverage the cloud should begin by moving non-
revenue generating and non-core systems to the cloud. And, they should consider developing a comprehensive
cloud strategy to move core applications to the cloud.
Since major shifts in technology can take years to make an impact, the migration of core financial services
applications to the cloud might take some time. Using Sapient’s Cloud Readiness Approach, financial
services firms can meet the technical challenges of cloud computing and build a comprehensive and
effective cloud strategy.
14
CLOUD COMPUTING FOR FINANCIAL SERVICES
WEB REFERENCES
[1] http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2390702,00.asp#fbid=lg3dX9bAIFr
[2] http://www.firm58.com
[3] http://www.infoq.com/articles/nasdaq-case-study-air-and-s3
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodd%E2%80%93Frank_Wall_Street_Reform_and_Consumer_Protection_Act
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_data
[6] http://www.nyse.com/press/1306838249812.html
[7] http://www.finextra.com/news/fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=22496
[8] http://www.xignite.com/News/PressRelease.aspx?articleid=207
[9] http://www.finextra.com/news/fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=19113
[10] http://www.wallstreetandtech.com/it-infrastructure/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212700913
[11] http://gigaom.com/cleantech/gridglo-mines-big-data-for-real-time-energy-apps
[12] http://www.hpcinthecloud.com/hpccloud/2011-03-21/clouds_set_to_make_smart_grids_smarter.html
About Sapient Global Markets
Sapient Global Markets, a division of Sapient® (NASDAQ: SAPE), is a leading provider of services to today’s
evolving financial and commodity markets. We provide a full range of capabilities to help our clients grow and
enhance their businesses, create robust and transparent infrastructure, manage operating costs, and foster
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For more information, visit sapientglobalmarkets.com.
© 2011 Sapient Corporation.
Trademark Information: Sapient and the Sapient logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sapient Corporation or its subsidiaries in
the U.S. and other countries. All other trade names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.
EQUITY DERIVATIVES STANDARDISATION: A Critical Element in Curbing Systemic Risk
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