Financial institutions are implementing solutions from multiple cloud service providers, but the resulting networks can be inconsistent and problematic.

That is a key takeaway from a report commissioned by Santa Clara, Calif.-based Prosimo, whose machine learning-driven platform enables multicloud infrastructure. The report polled more than 400 IT decision-makers in the U.S. and U.K. at financial services, retail, manufacturing and health care organizations with more than 1,000 employees.

Ninety-one percent of respondents said that their organizations will support multiple clouds during the next 12 months, and 73% will increase cloud spend, according to the report.

The biggest challenge in moving to multicloud networks is consistency, Mehul Patel, head of customer intelligence and data insights at Prosimo, told Bank Automation News. He explained that organizations adopting cloud services fall into three categories.

“If you look at the split, you’ve got a lot of people that are just using one cloud and are looking to expand their footprint within that one cloud presence,” Patel said. “Others think they’ve mastered one cloud services provider like [Amazon Web Services] AWS, and now want to use something like Google. A third bucket is 100% in cloud and using everything, but the reality is, a lot of people aren’t in that far-right corner.”

Patel outlined four challenges of a multicloud network:

1. Cloud networking across different services and providers must be consistent;
2. Application performance must be measured and consistent;
3. The network must incorporate IT security; and
4. The network must have end-to-end visibility/observability, including users, devices, connectivity, network and performance.

“All of that has to tie in together — only then are you going to be successful in delivering outcomes,” Patel told BAN.

Redesigning apps and data for cloud

FIs are moving to multicloud networking for improved flexibility and application performance, and are often implementing an automated “vending ” approach in selecting various financial services solutions, said Randy Armknecht, managing director and global cloud practice leader at global consulting firm Protiviti.

The challenge is the complexity required of the application architecture when the application needs to execute in multiple cloud service provider environments. It also requires thoughtfulness about managing data transfer costs across cloud environments, Armknecht told BAN.

As financial institutions shift to the cloud, it will require change in how they approach software design, said Ram Puppala, chief technology officer at real-time payments solutions provider ACI Worldwide. For example, many current applications are not designed to distribute their workloads across different cloud computing and storage providers, he said.

Going forward, Puppala noted, many technology providers will redesign their applications to leverage multicloud capabilities, including legacy software.

Not all cloud platforms offer the same capabilities, and key to a successful multicloud network is data quality and availability, said Alfredo Rubina, vice president of financial services at Austin, Texas-based IT consulting firm SoftServe.

“More and more financial service providers understand that data consistency and availability are critical factors for greater flexibility and agility, and that means adopting the right cloud technologies,” Rubina said.

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