Banks Choose Multicloud to Avoid Disruptions Due to Outage

Banks are moving their workloads to different cloud platforms instead of depending on a single services provider, as they are scared that cloud outages could deal catastrophic damage to their business.

In a survey of financial services providers conducted by Google Cloud, 90% of respondents showed interest in a multi-cloud strategy.

Today, only one-fifth (17%) of banks have employed a multi-cloud approach. Notably, of those firms that do not, the vast majority (88%) are considering employing a multi-cloud approach in the near future.

That’s because, analysts say, banking is a very sensitive business, and most of them have already moved their critical operations, such as payment systems, to the cloud.  Now they fear that a glitch at one cloud platform could bring down their operations, leaving customers unable to make payments.

While financial services firms have migrated substantial workloads to the cloud, the industry is far from full adoption for all core workloads, says Google. Banks in the US and Canada are leading when it comes to cloud adoption. With a 42% adoption rate, Japan is far behind.

“The barriers to adoption vary, from the complexity of legacy systems, to trust and skills gaps, regulatory uncertainty, and fragmentation of compliance requirements,” the report noted.

Banks across the world have ramped up cloud spending, particularly after the COVID-19 pandemic stoked demand for online banking.  A recent study by IDC has predicted that banks could spend US$85 billion on the cloud by 2025.