Cloud will be an enabler of innovation and growth: Here’s how to leverage it

By Narsimha M

Previously, enterprises viewed cloud as a way to reduce costs and optimise their workloads. Today, the cloud is no longer about merely simplifying infrastructure but about providing faster applications. Delivering applications faster, with innovative features, is the key to creating exciting user journeys and improving customer stickiness. Empowered thus, organisations are increasingly putting customer experience ahead in their strategy for business growth.

In this digital age, data has become paramount. Data is the lifeblood of today’s digital marketplace – the means by which digital enterprises uncover how lean are their operations, how effective are their processes and how engaged are their customers. The ability to leverage data about every customer action can help enterprises craft delightful customer offerings – and this is where cloud is a key differentiator.

Cloud as an enabler of innovation and growth

Applications on the cloud work dynamically to ensure always-on and always-available business operations. With integrated data analytics powered by big data, enterprises can enhance their decision-making process by gleaning insights into possible downtime incidents and failures, understand how their customers interact with their products and services and build services to improve customer satisfaction.

Image Credit: IBM

Take for example, a global automobile manufacturer that used APIs to leverage big data on cloud and offer real-time contextual services for drivers as well as the extended automobile ecosystem. This way, the company moves beyond being just car manufacturers, but also a creators of a complete experience that covers financial services, concierge services and more, all with the car at the center.

Deploying applications on cloud allows enterprises to play with new functionalities, set up infrastructure much faster than before and go live within days. DevOps plays a vital role in helping such enterprises change on the go and adopt new technologies by leveraging agile practices and people transformation. For instance, an education service provider has leveraged a cloud-based platform that integrates niche enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions and applications to create an integrated community cloud that now connects over 450 schools. This ensures seamless and uniform learning for students of all schools irrespective of location while simplifying the management.

Multi-cloud environments give businesses the flexibility to reduce their dependency on a single cloud provider. In doing so, these environments simplify large-scale operations, manage a variety of workloads and prevent vendor lock-in while improving reliability and accelerating operations – for themselves and their customers.

An enterprise may choose to keep their external facing applications on one cloud vendor while keeping their internal applications hosted on another cloud vendor.

Three ways to leverage the cloud

Lift and shift 
By moving applications in their current state from an on-premise server to that in a cloud environment, enterprises can infuse better functionalities, ensure higher security and deliver a better customer experience at a much lower cost. A case in point here is of a global provider of technology and hardware for document and information management that embarked on a journey to move their services to private clouds, by simply consolidating 9 data centers to two tier-III data centers. By reducing their server count, they not only increased system availability to 99.99 per cent, but were able to slash costs for hosting, hardware, utility, and licensing infrastructure by 30 percent. Besides improving performance, migrating to cloud has helped the client deliver new hosting services for their customers.

Image: Microsoft

Re-engineer applications 
Enterprises need to modernise and upgrade many of their existing applications to be able to work with modern technology. Applications need to be upgraded to function seamlessly in a cloud environment to make them truly scalable and efficient. For example, a software developer for legal firms had designed their products to run on physical servers within law firms. While this was done to safeguard sensitive information, data could be only be accessed from within the customers’ offices. To make things simpler for their customers, the company re-engineered their software to work on the cloud on a multi-tenant model. Now, the software is provided as a service with improved performance and 99.99 per cent system availability. Besides reducing costs incurred by customers, they increased their business by targeting new segments such as small, medium and large firms who can buy their products with zero investment in hardware.

Cloud Native Applications 
While a large number of enterprises are still investing in moving/re-engineering applications for a cloud environment, for many a parallel journey of building applications that are cloud-first is the way forward. This involves understanding cloud computing architecture and taking advantage of cloud computing frameworks, to build and deliver various services directly from the cloud. Recently, a global retailer looking for scalability, agility, productivity, and performance deployed a cloud-based solution that merged a robust e-commerce platform with various systems such as content management, search and recommendations, and cart management. The new platform has helped the retailer rapidly deploy their digital solutions and enter new markets such as Australia, the Middle East and China.

Today, cloud is already an enabler of transformation for organisations looking for simpler operations and leaner workloads. Going forward, it is set to drive greater innovation and growth. The way forward is to leverage cloud along with innovative and emerging technologies such as IoT, blockchain and AI, thereby creating a robust digital foundation that will help smart organisations stay ahead.

The author is SVP and Head – Infosys Validation Solutions & Cloud, Infrastructure and Security, Infosys

Publish date: April 10, 2017 10:52 am| Modified date: April 10, 2017 10:52 am

Singapore to test blockchain technology for interbank transactions

Ravi Menon, managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), speaks at the Singapore Fintech Festival in Singapore November 16, 2016. REUTERS/Edgar Su

  16 Nov 2016 , 18:00

In a major move to explore the use of digital currency in Singapore, the city state’s central bank plans to launch a pilot project with the country’s stock exchange and eight local and foreign banks to use blockchain technology for interbank payments. Cross-border foreign currency transactions will also be reviewed under the pilot as Singapore’s central bank looks to position the financial center as an important Fintech hub.

The effort is supported by the R3 blockchain research lab and BCS Information Systems, Ravi Menon, managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), said at the Singapore Fintech Festival. “Under the pilot system banks will deposit cash as collateral with the MAS in exchange for MAS-issued digital currency,” Menon said on Wednesday. The consortium includes Bank of America Merrill Lynch, The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, Ltd, Credit Suisse, DBS Bank Ltd, The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp Ltd, JP Morgan, OCBC Bank, Singapore Exchange and United Overseas Bank.

Blockchain, which originates from digital currency bitcoin, works as an electronic transaction-processing and record-keeping system that allows all parties to track information through a secure network, with no need for third-party verification. “The next phase of the project will involve transactions in foreign currency, possibly with the support of another central bank,” Menon told an audience of bankers and executives from technology companies.

Policymakers in Singapore have sought to attract investment in Fintech, easing regulation and setting up special departments to support the industry. The MAS on Wednesday also finalised guidelines for a “regulatory sandbox”, which allows financial institutions and finTech players to test their new business models and products without falling foul of financial rules.

Menon also said Singapore is in the process of creating a national know-your-customer or KYC utility through a personal data platform that will have government-verified personal details of residents. The MAS will partner with the government agencies to expand the platform known as “MyInfo service” to the financial industry for more efficient KYC checks.

Singapore has stepped up scrutiny of its banking industry following a money laundering probe linked to Malaysian state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), which cast a spotlight on one of the world’s leading wealth management centres.

Reuters

Banks uses blockchain to the make first cross-border international trade transaction

Image Credit: Commonwealth Bank of Australia

  24 Oct 2016 , 15:48

The first cross-border transaction between banks using multiple blockchain applications has taken place, Commonwealth Bank of Australia and Wells Fargo & Co said on Monday, resulting in a shipment of cotton to China from the United States. Australian cotton trader Brighann Cotton Marketing bought the shipment bound for the port city Qingdao from U.S. division Brighann Cotton in Texas, the companies and their banks said in a joint statement. The blockchain trade, for 88 bales, totalled $35,000, Commonwealth Bank told Reuters.

Blockchain is a web-based transaction processing and settlement system whose efficiency banks say could slash costs. It creates a “golden record” of any given set of data that is automatically replicated for all parties in a secure network, eliminating any need for third-party verification. “Existing trade finance processes are ripe for disruption, and this proof of concept demonstrates how companies around the world could benefit from these emerging technologies,” Michael Eidel, Commonwealth Bank’s executive general manager for cash flow and transaction services, said in the statement.

The transaction is not the first involving the decentralised database, used since 2009 for the digital currency bitcoin. But it is a milestone for the traditional banking industry which at first shied away from the technology, partly because it makes money flows harder for law enforcement agencies to track.

Led by a consortium of over 70 of the world’s biggest financial institutions – called R3 – the banking industry has been researching ways to harness the speed, accuracy and efficiency afforded by blockchain. One of its benefits is removing people from transaction processing. That has been seen as especially appealing for cross-border trades, which are typically held up by duplication of payment processing and time zone differences.

R3 has been researching ways to expand the use of blockchain to include “smart contracts”, or payments triggered when certain conditions are met. The cotton transaction, for instance, involved automatically making payments when the shipment reached certain geographic locations, the statement showed. The shipment is currently between Singapore and Hong Kong, and is due to arrive in early November, Commonwealth Bank said. The bank also said that R3 – of which it and Wells Fargo are members – did not play a part in the trade.

Brighann Cotton was not available for comment when contacted by Reuters. Wells Fargo’s head of international trade services, Chris Lewis, said in the statement that his bank was committed to new technology. He also said, “significant regulatory, legal and other concerns remain to  be addressed.”

Reuters