8 ways Google Cloud elevates agility and security for financial services

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:

1. 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.

2. 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. 

3. 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.

4. 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. 

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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}