Cloud? Yes. But first, ask how-and who.

Partners who know FSI are the key to successful migration and operation

Financial services industry (FSI) institutions face tough challenges as they strive to align fast-evolving technology with fast-changing market demands. Many FSI organizations have turned to cloud migration—but more slowly, in some cases, than their counterparts in other industries, which makes timely action all the more critical now.

As in other sectors, financial services businesses see the cloud as a way to catalyze growth and innovation, become more agile, and control costs. Industry-specific functions, from a bank’s credit decisioning to an insurer’s underwriting to a capital markets firm’s trading systems, can all benefit from a more flexible architecture.

But by itself, choosing migration doesn’t answer critical questions such as which cloud, with which tools, configured, secured and managed in which way. What works for a manufacturer or a telecom company may not be right for a bank or insurer. Banks want a banking landing zone in the cloud pre-packaged with the necessary security and regulatory compliance controls, configured and managed by partners who understand how to maximize the true benefits that a flexible workload and its surround market add-on can bring. In short, you can’t plan or execute a cloud migration without first understanding the business that’s migrating.

Meeting a unique need

Banks, investment firms, and insurers need the agility of the cloud to address data-intensive regulatory shifts, ward off sophisticated cyber threats, and outflank both traditional competitors and emergent fintech disruptors. They are also eager to weave the power of machine learning and Generative AI into their operations and offerings.

However, many FSI entities are configured to sustain operations, not to transform them, so operational instabilities linger. Where cloud migration has happened, it may have focused on low-complexity workloads while leaving complex, nested ones in a legacy state. Meanwhile, a tentative approach to new tech may combine with uncontrolled costs to lock broader innovation out of the budget.

To break through these roadblocks, organizations need to understand that the cloud requires collaboration. The right cloud provider is vital of course. The company’s internal IT team remains central—they are changing their work, not merely handing it off. And the secret third ingredient is a strategic partner to connect the two, with the ability not just to duplicate an institution’s complexity, but to simplify it to realize the set-out benefit and run it with unparallelled operational confidence.

The power of three

The partnership between Amazon Web Services (AWS) and DXC Technology is one example of how institutions can engage this “power of three.” A powerful cloud platform, equipped with a flexible array of tools and services, functions best when an experienced systems integrator (SI) brings transformative offerings and industry experience to the mix.

DXC carries out thousands of migrations each year with a 99.9 percent success rate, thanks in part to more than 45 years of experience living in the FSI world, which gives us a deep functional application of how the landscape connects to the data and workload dependencies that underpin it. We also bring enterprise-grade capabilities like Precision Guided Modernization—which manages existing on-premises investments while using financial modeling to identify the best use of public and private cloud to achieve business objectives—and FSI-specific landing zone accelerators. In our strategic partnership, AWS and DXC emphasize the related value of cloud migration and modernization and workforce and asset transformation.

That matters because a company, its cloud host and its SI don’t end their collaboration when the shift is done. The power trio remains engaged in operating, securing and evolving critical banking functions, not just standing them up. The goal is to continuously gain business value in the new environment.

Technology results drive business outcomes

Making technology more responsive is ultimately a means to an end. For FSI firms, cloud migrations undertaken with the help of AWS and DXC demonstrate returns on investment that can be measured in business terms. The track record of DXC-led migrations to the AWS Cloud shows this is possible.

The flexibility of a cloud or hybrid approach takes costs out of on-premises infrastructures, while reductions in repetitive tactical work make the workforce more productive. With security tighter and downtime reduced, organizations enjoy greater operational resilience, and complex regulatory compliance is easier to manage at scale.

Meanwhile, the way forward is smoother and faster: In a cloud environment, adding features, debuting new products, and entering new geographies takes a fraction of the time it once did. FSI institutions can more readily adopt data governance and functionality to answer their customers’ appetite for personalized, always-on, AI-driven experiences.

Share the road with someone who has traveled it

Every FSI organization is on its own cloud journey. Some are weighing how to start or how far to go. Many have already taken steps toward migration that have left them disappointed in the business outcomes. To succeed on their respective paths forward, they need to choose a hyperscaler and integrator who can ensure the right workload for the right business outcome, look beyond technology to define a data strategy for the business—then work backwards to strive towards it. Together, AWS and DXC use their strong understanding of FSI businesses to develop a cloud strategy that makes sense for the shared work ahead.