Sibos 2023: The Imperative of Multi-Cloud in Modern Banking
· min September 28, 2023
In an enlightening session at Sibos 2023, Mike Walters, Chief Product Officer at Form3 and Gary King, Chief Architect - Corporate & Institutional Banking, Payments & Finance at Lloyds Banking Group delved deep into the transformative power of multi-cloud strategies in the banking and payments arena. Amidst a backdrop of evolving regulatory landscapes and emerging industry standards, the duo underscored the increasing significance of multi-cloud environments. Their message was clear: In an industry where change is the only constant, flexibility and resilience are not just desirable – they're essential.
King, began the session discussing the critical role of technology in enhancing customer satisfaction. He remarked, "In the banking sector, the customer's trust is paramount. To uphold this trust, we've designed our systems to minimise failures." It's not merely about embracing innovation, but about guaranteeing that customers enjoy a consistent and dependable experience.
Shifting the conversation to the UK's regulatory landscape, King spotlighted the operational resilience framework. Far from being mere guidelines, this framework serves as a directive, ensuring that financial institutions remain unshakeable, even when faced with challenges. "It's a holistic approach that ensures we're always prepared, and our clients are always protected," King elaborated, emphasising the framework's focus on understanding the broader implications of disruptions.
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…a multi-cloud approach ensures that if one cloud provider faces an outage, the transaction can continue seamlessly on another provider, offering an uninterrupted experience
Mike Walters · Chief Executive Officer
Walters then steered the discussion towards the tangible impacts of these shifts, introducing the audience to the nuances of multi-cloud infrastructure. He painted a vivid picture of how such systems function in real-time across leading cloud platforms like AWS, GCP, and Azure. "…a multi-cloud approach ensures that if one cloud provider faces an outage, the transaction can continue seamlessly on another provider, offering an uninterrupted experience," Walters detailed.
The challenges weren't left untouched. Both Walters and King highlighted the hurdles, especially in guaranteeing uninterrupted service. Walters added another dimension, stating, "Beyond just continuity, our platform also offers real-time fraud prevention and screening, adding another layer of security for our users."
On the topic of data sovereignty, Walters emphasised the necessity of ensuring data processing remains confined within specific geographic boundaries. He explained, "We're acutely aware that payments, even at a vast scale, remain localised. This allows us to assure a U.S. bank, for instance, that the data processing of their transactions will operate within the U.S. boundary."
Concluding the session, both Walters and King reiterated a salient point: As the heart of payment operations transitions to the cloud, the resilience of today's financial institutions isn't just a goal – it's an imperative.
Taking the next step with a multi-cloud approach
The Form3 multi-cloud platform provides full cloud resilience and data consistency across multiple cloud providers.
That means payments made in one cloud can instantaneously be monitored in the other. The architecture enables the highest degree of availability with reduced cloud provider concentration risk.
This allows deployment of our core services across multiple cloud providers. Our multi-cloud architecture provides real time data consistency across clouds, allowing customers to load-balance payments across our cloud endpoints.
