Financial Firms Can Enjoy These 8 Benefits by Migrating and Running on Google Cloud VMware Engine
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The COVID-19 pandemic brought dramatic changes to the financial services industry. Already under pressure from nimble young fintechs to modernize, established banks and insurers were undergoing incremental digital transformation. But in 2020, they hit the gas pedal. Branches closed and remote work became the norm. Almost overnight, employees needed secure remote access to corporate systems, and customers expected to be able to complete even complex transactions whenever they wanted, on whatever device. Even as things return to normal, many of these shifts are likely to be permanent. According to Forrester Research, nearly 90% of global financial services CIOs and SVPs believe that improving their application portfolio is key to improving customer experience and driving revenue.1 The problem? Replacing legacy systems with cloud-based SaaS enterprise software is a massive, time- and resource-intensive process.
IDG’s recently completed white paper, Financial Services Spotlight: Elevating agility and security in the cloud, highlights an alternative to the all-or-nothing approach to replatforming: “lifting and shifting” on-premises applications and workloads to the cloud without rewriting them. In this way, you keep your organization’s familiar architecture, but give it the scalability and cutting-edge technology of a modern cloud environment. That’s the promise of Google Cloud VMware Engine brings to the financial services industry.
Here’s a quick overview of the insights that the IDG study uncovers. Download the complete white paper.
Simpler migration, rich rewards
Google Cloud VMware Engine helps financial services companies seamlessly migrate and run
VMware workloads natively on Google Cloud. Once in the cloud, firms can take advantage of Google Cloud services, access a robust third-party cloud ecosystem, and use the same VMware tools, processes, and policies their teams already know. The IDG study found that migrating to Google Cloud with Google Cloud VMware Engine offers multiple benefits:
- Create new customer experiences. Migrating to Google Cloud puts modern, cloud-native architectures and technologies — such as containers and microservices — easily within reach. These make it possible for financial institutions to quickly and securely launch new applications and update them on a continuous basis using DevOps pipelines. They also allow firms to craft more personalized customer experiences across channels using Google Cloud’s native AI and data analytics.
- Deliver new services. After migrating, financial services organizations can connect to multiple third-party service providers via cloud-based APIs to bring new, diverse services to their customers — without having to build from scratch.
- Make the best use of IT resources. When your data and applications reside in Google Cloud, you’re no longer constrained by the physical storage and compute limits of on-premises infrastructure. This means your company can match capacity to demand — even during unexpected peaks. You also gain more visibility into your hybrid cloud environment with Google Cloud’s operations suite, which offers intelligent analysis and easier troubleshooting for your platform and applications.
- Gain fresh insights. The key to understanding what customers need and when they need it resides within your data, and data analytics in the cloud help you uncover those insights. Your company can connect to Google Cloud’s serverless data warehouse, BigQuery, which leverages data to deliver valuable insights for personalized customer experiences, rich compliance reporting, new product development, intelligent fraud detection, and more.
- Choose what to move. Data governance regulations and requirements specific to the financial services industry mean that some data must remain on premises. Google Cloud VMware Engine lets you easily manage a hybrid cloud/on-premises environment to keep sensitive data fully under your control.
- Become more resilient. Google Cloud VMware Engine gives financial services firms a distributed architecture and centralized control for their applications to support vital business continuity functions, such as backup and disaster recovery. This is on top of the performance and availability of Google Cloud’s global infrastructure.
- Improve security. Using cloud-native application frameworks, administrators can issue patches and software updates centrally and automatically across their organizations. This reduces the risk of errors and security vulnerabilities. Firms also tap into the security features and capabilities of Google Cloud, including always-on encryption and AI-powered threat detection.
- Redirect IT resources. Migrating virtualized workloads to the cloud can free up talent and budget to develop new products and services — time that was previously spent on maintaining complex on-premises infrastructure. That means less effort spent keeping the lights on, and more resources directed toward creating innovative and differentiating customer experiences.
IDG research concluded that migrating business applications to Google Cloud with Google Cloud VMware Engine can help financial services companies stay ahead of change without incurring further technical debt from their legacy IT systems. Working with cloud-based systems can give your financial services company much of the scale, speed, and agility of a startup while still enjoying the benefits of being an established organization.
Read the complete white paper to learn more about the ways in which Google and VMware work together to accelerate digital transformation for financial services firms.
1. Vmware-forrester-financial-services-modern-app-report.pdf, A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of VMware, 2020
You Can Now ‘Listen’ to Over 50 Tech Blogs on Google Cloud Reader
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🎧 Prefer to listen? Check out this episode on the Google Cloud Reader podcast
If you’re anything like me, you love reading, but also appreciate that sometimes your eyes need to be doing other things; whether it’s finding your exit off the highway, or keeping your puppy from destroying the couch.
And sometimes the thought of sitting down to read something just feels like it’s going to take valuable multi-tasking time away from my day. I know, I know, multitasking can be frowned upon, but it’s the way I live a good chunk of my life, and it’s working out so far. And while I’m not alone in my multitasking, I’m also not alone in my desire for a non-visual way to get this content, or any content.
*Google Cloud Reader enters the chat*
Google Cloud Reader is a podcast that lets you listen to the Google Cloud Blog posts that aren’t as dependent on visuals. This means they’re articles that are, or are adapted to be, less focused on graphs, or code samples, and instead describe the meaning behind those visual aids.
It’s an easy, audible way to absorb content around all things new in Cloud, while still being able to make sure Ruthie doesn’t eat my work from home equipment.
So by now you’re probably thinking “OK, so you started a podcast during the pandemic, even though you definitely seemed like the type to start making sourdough”—and you’re right. My 53 plants agree with you. But rest assured, one can listen to an episode of this podcast *while* creating a macramé plant hanger, or waiting for bread to rise—multitasking, am I right?
We’re a little over 50 episodes/macrame plant hangers in, so you should check it out (Ruth and I would appreciate it).
Some of my personal favorites
- Beginners Guide to Painless Machine Learning – Learn how to get started with Google Cloud AI tools
- Introducing GKE Autopilot: A Revolution in Managed Kubernetes – Learn more about GKE Autopilot, a revolutionary mode of operations for managed Kubernetes that lets you focus on your software, while GKE Autopilot manages the infrastructure.
- Cook up your own ML recipes with AI Platform – Learn about Mars Wrigley’s new ML-inspired recipe experiment on Google Cloud and how you can get started with your own.
- Recovering Global Wildlife Populations using ML – Review Google’s Wildlife Insight’s ML project and help users create an image classification model for motion-sensor cameras (called camera traps) used to help protect wildlife in an non-invasive way by collecting and tagging species via pictures.
Let me know your favorite episodes, and what other articles you’d like to hear on Twitter @jbrojbrojbro!
No matter why you prefer an audio format, we’ve got you covered; Google Cloud Reader, where we read the tech blog for you, and to you.
Get all the Google Cloud Reader on your favorite podcast platform, including Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.
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In a study of 360 business and technology decision makers and influencers from Indian enterprises, conducted by Forrester Consulting, it is revealed that public cloud adoption in India is on the rise with 2 in 3 organizations planning to increase their cloud spending by 5% or more in the next 12 months.
According to the study, public cloud platforms help organizations to:
- Enable digital customer experience
- Improve digital operational excellence
- Power digital ecosystem expansion
- Accelerate digital innovation
Download this infographic to understand why Indian companies are adopting a cloud-first approach to accelerate digital transformation.
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How Bloomberg uses Google Translate to Share Breaking News with the World
Bloomberg uses Google Translate to instantly share news with customers in more than 170 countries. Financial markets can move within seconds of a story breaking, so speed matters. With Google’s automated translation Bloomberg can quickly disseminate breaking financial news to customers around the world in 40 different languages.
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Many organizations are looking to the public cloud to solve on-premises infrastructure challenges. These range from capacity constraints, aging hardware, or reliability issues; or alternatively, organizations may be looking to capitalize on the value that cloud infrastructure can bring – saving money through automatic scaling, or deriving business value from large scale, cloud-native approaches to data processing and analytics.
However, moving to the cloud can be a complex and time-consuming journey. An inefficient migration program can significantly reduce the benefits realized from the migration, and a pure lift-and-shift approach can leave you with similar challenges and costs in the cloud as you were trying to escape from on-premises.
In this whitepaper, we outline Google’s approach to building a Migration Factory – an organization structure and set of processes that enable a fast, efficient migration to the cloud. We don’t presume that this is a team of Googlers coming to deliver your migration. We recommend building a blended team of people with the right skills and understanding of your organization, with clearly defined goals that are closely measured through the life of the program.
Building a Stronger South Bend through Cloud Computing Education
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The city of South Bend, Indiana has announced they are working with Google Cloud to connect 500 local job seekers with no-cost access to Google Cloud Skills Boost through Upskill SB. This initiative will train, upskill, and certify residents in cloud computing skills to create pathways to technical jobs.
As companies, nonprofits, and governments increasingly leverage cloud computing technology to strengthen their organizations, skilled cloud talent is in high demand both nationally, in Indiana, and in South Bend. According to Lightcast, there were 27,180 unique cloud roles open in the U.S. as of October 2022. Cloud skills are the most in-demand skill set by IT departments: more than one-third of tech learners said professionals with cloud skills are the most challenging to find.
“This partnership with Google Cloud will help residents get on a no-cost path to a cloud computing career at a time when the field is rapidly growing,” said Caleb Bauer, Executive Director of Community Investment for the City of South Bend. “This will help residents prepare to take the next step in their career with Google Cloud Skills Boost and will pave the way to build in-demand skills.”
Google Cloud Skills Boost is the destination for all Google Cloud learning and training opportunities. Local colleges and universities are also able to offer free access to Google Cloud Skills Boost for students through the Google Cloud Higher Education program. Students can request access to free online labs, quests, and courses. Faculty can take advantage of free Google Cloud Computing Foundations curriculum and coach their students to prepare for Google Cloud certifications.
“Google is proud to offer no-cost access to Google Cloud Skills Boost for jobseekers in South Bend,” said Alice Kamens, Workforce Development lead at Google Cloud. “Through this partnership, we’re advancing our work to ensure everyone has access to the technical training needed to pursue cloud computing careers.”
Those interested in learning more about the program or applying for Upskill SB should visit the Google Cloud page on Upskill SB. Scholarship recipients need access to a computer, hand-held device or smartphone and the internet.
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