Even though banking is one area that seems most risk-laden for cloud computing, financial services as a whole has been one of the early adopting market segments to get on board. This is in part due to the cost benefits and flexibility in IT among other benefits. According to a new report from Gartner Research, 51% of North American banks are using some type of SaaS for their daily operations although certainly not for their most mission-critical sensitive data. Many predict that some of the most persistent data security issues will be worked through in the coming years which will force that 51 percent to rise higher in subsequent quarters. As it stands now, banks are looking to the clouds to handle CRM and HR but there are definitely more progressive adoption patterns among some of the bigger banks. But seriously, do you think they’re going to talk about it? No. The fact remains, the SaaS industry should look to the banking industry to see early adopter patterns–more specifically, what banks are comfortable putting into the cloud–and work to develop from there.
The Impact of Cloud on Suppliers in Banking
July 5, 2010