devopsy.kinsta.cloud

Tag: financial technology

  • The Future of FinTech and the Cloud

    The Future of FinTech and the Cloud

    The integration of FinTech continues to revolutionize the way businesses interact with their consumers. What started as a viable solution to eliminating the need to carry physical currency has now become a multi-billion-dollar industry.

    Basically, FinTech is a catch-all term used to describe software, mobile applications and other integrated technologies that improve and automate traditional forms of finance for businesses and their consumers. The financial infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) focuses on enabling FinTech companies to quickly facilitate highly secure transactions among an internal network while improving user experience. The complex (yet efficient) solution helps streamline fiscal transactions while simultaneously eliminating unnecessary steps throughout the transaction process. Ultimately, making financial transactions more affordable and accessible.

    The integration of FinTech continues to bolster unprecedented growth within the business sector. The industry’s rapid growth can be attributed to a shift in consumers’ lifestyles towards more accessible and affordable solutions. As a result, FinTech has been able to solidify a prominent role within business operations, however, needs to remain vigilant in adapting infrastructures to satisfy ever-changing consumer and industry demands.

    With this goal in mind, FinTech companies have begun to innovate new solutions which include embracing the cloud within its infrastructures. With new integration, companies will have to determine whether using fintech-cloud computing entities will ultimately be an asset in achieving longevity and lucrative business growth or not. 

    FinTech Meets Cloud

    FinTech companies are rapidly turning to the cloud to provide businesses and consumers with effective solutions. According to a research study, 87% of enterprises plan to accelerate their cloud migration by 2025. So, why is cloud computing becoming imperative for FinTech companies to integrate?

    1. Agility: For businesses to compete, they must stay ahead of the competitive curve by reacting quickly to market changes. Cloud services satisfy this need by enabling companies to accelerate its scaling process. Businesses can scale their capacity up or down quickly to meet customer demand in real-time. As a result, providing a more cost-efficient solution.

    2. Competitive Advantage: Within the financial industry’s competitive landscape, it can be quite difficult for smaller companies to gain significant market share. Likewise, larger corporations struggle to retain customers as internal legacy IT practices hinder reaction rate times to changing customer demands. The cloud provides both entities with a better way to compete by offering a quicker alternative to meeting customers’ demands.

    3. Enhanced Customer Experience: Millennials and Gen Z have transformed the banking industry by starting to view finances through the lens of technology. Cloud computing offers FinTech companies the opportunity to promote enhanced customer experience with consumer-centric web applications and improved efficiency metrics. Ultimately, providing the next generation of consumers with an accessible, agile and much more manageable solution that adheres to their technology-savvy lifestyle.

    4. Cost-Effective: Businesses can incur significant infrastructure costs while developing and deploying FinTech products for a large customer base. Cloud adoption can help cut down costs by limiting usage, promoting elasticity of its products and adhering to an all-inclusive price.

    5. Amplified Security Measures: With the ecosystem of hackers and cybercriminals continuing to evolve, companies must remain proactive in mitigating the potential risk of data breaches and cyberattacks. FinTech applications with weak security measures can compromise customer data and other private information. Consequently, leaving the door open to exploitation by malicious operators. Hybrid cloud architecture provides a more secure framework by allowing companies to build their own solutions in the cloud infrastructure they own, rather than in a shared environment within a shared network. As a result, they can be proactive and help eliminate potential data security risks.

    Limitations of FinTech: Enhancing Cloud Integration

    Cloud computing integration continues to provide FinTech companies the opportunity to accelerate business growth. While there are a number of FinTech companies that have managed to achieve great success while using these infrastructures, other companies have failed.

    Any company that invests in FinTech (or any other public cloud service) is susceptible to potential disadvantages. It’s important that companies begin to identify these potential challenges and actively try to avoid them.

    Here are potential limitations to consider:

    1. Refusing to Use Existing Tools:  Change is difficult to manage. Nevertheless, it’s important that companies continue to embrace new technology as they emerge. If FinTech companies refuse to build platforms using current technology, they run the risk of an influx of user discrepancies. On the contrary, if they decide to scale up, they run the risk of hindering the agility of the entire company. By using existing and open source technology, companies can proactively fix their problems and promote continuity in their infrastructures by eliminating outdated data, obscure patches and massive inefficiencies.

    2. Ignoring Scope and Capacity: Using FinTech engineering requires an abundance of capacity planning to ensure an effective solution is created. Without planning, companies run the risk of creating infrastructures that cannot accommodate the volume of metrics used. This can result in killing dashboard performance and making troubleshooting issues impossible. It’s important to plan at every stage regardless of what providers are used.

    3. The Desire to Implement More than Required: Amid a fast-paced and competitive industry, FinTech engineers are constantly implementing new innovations to solidify their competitive advantage. It’s important companies continue to innovate and improve their products; however, operations should not stray too far from their original scope of work. Businesses should work to eliminate unnecessary additions within their projects that could result in wasting a considerable amount of time and resources. Keep simple tasks simple.  

    4. Plan and Evaluate: Businesses need flexibility, independence and a cost structure to thrive. To achieve these marks, it’s necessary for companies to take the time to plan and evaluate each offering to determine which solution accommodates their business needs. Although switching providers might seem doable, doing so can result in a more complicated and expensive solution. Setting long-term objectives before deciding on a provider could make that eventual move simpler for your team.

    The integration of FinTech and cloud computing services continues to impact the technology, finance and business sectors. The question of whether a FinTech-cloud computing structure is a more viable solution in businesses remains. By planning and evaluating each financial solution, businesses can determine which FinTech service is the most feasible for optimizing business objectives.

    FinTech companies will always continue to provide safe and seamless solutions for their customers, however, it’s the companies who can capitalize on efficiency that will rise to the top. As FinTech and cloud integration continues to revolutionize customer-brand solutions, we will become closer to unveiling the future of FinTech and the lasting impacts it has on society.

  • FinOps 101: Demystifying Cloud Financial Operations for DevOps

    FinOps 101: Demystifying Cloud Financial Operations for DevOps

    In an ideal world, all organizations would have a dedicated FinOps team—or at least a single specialist who could work to ensure that the cloud was operating in a financially savvy way. Of course, in reality, most organizations are strapped for skills and are operating lean teams where responsibilities are spread thickly across employees. In that case, DevOps professionals are likely to get left holding the FinOps bag and tasked with implementing FinOps best practices into their everyday cloud operations. If that sounds familiar—here’s your guide to getting started.

    The Cultural Shift of Considering FinOps

    In many ways, it’s not that great a leap for DevOps to start thinking about FinOps. After all, the underlying goals of both strategies are to optimize, improve and streamline operations. The difference is that DevOps is focused on software development and technical skills, while FinOps looks at the financial costs of operating on the cloud.

    The biggest challenge is that sometimes these goals may be at odds with each other. If DevOps teams are tasked with getting new software releases and fixes out of the gate as quickly as possible, that can often come at the expense of the most cost-effective solution. Think, for example, about AWS on-demand instances in the cloud. It’s arguably more FinOps-friendly to look for reserved instances, savings plans and committed use discounts and to put into place right-sizing opportunities where possible. However, with the pressure on DevOps teams to keep up an agile release cycle and offer quick fixes, anything that stands in the way of their flexibility and freedom can feel worth the price tag.

    As a result, it can be a true paradigm shift for engineers and DevOps teams to start thinking about FinOps first, especially if they already feel that their plate is full. Here are some best practices that can help to smooth over any bumps in the road.

    Make Engineers Accountable

    Don’t simply add new stakeholders who are responsible for cost management and FinOps, as they will quickly become adversaries of your engineers. Instead, ensure that your technical teams and developers realize that they are responsible for their cloud costs. They need to know what they are using and they need to codify and document how they are looking to use their budget more effectively.

    Of course, the business has a role in this too, showing engineers best practices for FinOps, such as shutting down idle resources, right-sizing instances or making smart architecture decisions. 

    Explain That FinOps Isn’t a Cost-Cutting Initiative

    If DevOps teams have been given the equivalent of a blank check thus far, it can be a tough sell to start tightening the purse strings. Explain to DevOps teams that you aren’t looking to cut their budget. In fact, you might even be increasing it!

    FinOps is all about smarter financial operations, so if engineers can show that they can save money in one direction, they can channel that to new features, technologies and tools that make them happy. Giving DevOps teams control over FinOps decisions offers more autonomy and control—and that’s a great thing.

    Ease the Mental Load With Low-Hanging Fruit

    Once DevOps teams get much-needed visibility over their cloud usage and realize that they are gaining responsibility and autonomy over their behavior, you want to guide them to recognize where they can make changes. Challenge all your DevOps stakeholders with the same KPIs, and see who can come up with innovative ways to incorporate cost savings into business-as-usual. Some KPIs that could be a great start include:

    • Coverage: Use of reserved instances, savings plans, spot instances or committed use discounts.
    • Right-sizing: The opportunity value of downsizing or terminating instances that are idle or underutilized.
    • Orphan/idle status: Tracking the percentage of orphaned EBS volumes or snapshots; you can drill down into a specific time period, such as over one month.
    • Forecast metrics: Consider using the variance between a forecasted bill and the actual costs and aim to reduce this as much as possible.
    • Incorrect assignation: This would highlight oversized or incorrect instance types, S3 or EBS storage on the wrong tier, unattached elastic IPs or poorly tagged/ untagged resources.
    • Peak hours: What percentage of development resources are running during peak hours or running when they could be shut down; for example, on weekends?

    Automation Incorporates FinOps Best Practices in a Hands-Off Way

    If this all sounds like a full-time job in and of itself—you’re not wrong. You’d be forgiven for wondering when DevOps teams are meant to actually develop and build! To keep engineers and technical teams productive, make sure that you’re offering the right tools and technology to lighten the load where possible, especially where automation and AI can do a better job than a room full of DevOps or FinOps experts.

    One example is automating the purchasing and selling of reserved instances in real-time, so that you’re never left buying on demand. Another is automating the removal or rightsizing of idle or underutilized resources, respectively. When your DevOps teams see that you’re offering the technology to make FinOps simple, they are much more likely to do their part elsewhere.

    DevOps and FinOps

    In recent years, security teams have championed the idea of DevOps ‘shifting left’ on security best practices to get security included in the process of agile software development during the build stages.

    Well, you heard it here first: It’s time for a similar shift for finance and cost optimization.

    Just as engineers can no longer get away with ignoring security in the way that they work, financial optimization needs to be front and center of DevOps teams’ day jobs. For this to work and for DevOps to incorporate FinOps goals seamlessly, businesses need to champion visibility for cloud usage, a culture of cost-optimization and a strong foundation of automation that bakes best practices into everyday work.

  • FinConDX: The State of DevOps in FinTech

    FinConDX: The State of DevOps in FinTech

    The FinTech space has grown dramatically this year as more consumers shift their financial transactions online due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Financial services companies are learning how to ship better code, faster by adopting DevOps methodologies. DevOps helps companies develop fast, fail fast and learn fast so they can fulfill customer expectations and deliver quality features faster to market than their competitors. However, the shift to DevOps is not that easy.

    The digital transformation journey for banking and financial services organizations can be quite challenging. That is why, on Dec. 3, the top financial services and tech leaders in the industry will come together at the FinConDX Virtual Summit, a free virtual conference focused on the DevOps, DevSecOps and digital transformation practices and tools you need to thrive in the FinTech industry today.

    FinConDX features a stellar lineup of industry experts, including:

    • Yaniv Yehuda, co-founder and CTO at DBmaestro
    • Viktor Farcic, principal DevOps architect at Codefresh
    • Sladjana Jovanovic, vice president of payments technology, TD Bank Group
    • Shannon Lietz, director of DevSecOps at Intuit
    • Sanjeev Sharma, senior vice president, head of automation and platform engineering at Truist
    • Rosalind Radcliffe, distinguished engineer at IBM
    • Don Duet, CEO and co-founder at Concourse Labs
    • Ravi Lachhman, chief evangelist at Harness
    • Matt Wilson, senior product manager at GitLab
    • Mitchell Ashley, CEO and founder at Accelerated Strategies Group
    • Keith Murphy, senior solutions architect at OutSystems
    • Jonathan Smart, partner, business agility lead at Deloitte
    • John Rzeszotarski, senior vice president of technology infrastructure at PNC
    • Dan Garfield, chief technology evangelist at Codefresh
    • Gary Gruver, CEO at Gruver Consulting and analyst at Accelerated Strategies Group

    The virtual environment features auditoriums with different tracks where attendees can watch the sessions by industry leaders and an exhibit hall lined with booths showcasing the latest solutions from leading DevOps companies. In the exhibit hall, attendees can download resources and interact with partner sponsors including Codefresh, GitLab, WhiteSource, DBmaestro, Harness, Traceable, OutSystems and more.

    Breakout sessions and panel discussions will fall under following topics:

    • Leading digital transformation
    • Emerging technology
    • Security and audit
    • Modernization tools

    Attendees can participate in a scavenger hunt throughout the virtual environment for a chance to win amazing prizes. Participants earn points by visiting booths, watching sessions, downloading resources, networking with speakers in the chat and finding hidden objects in the environment.

    Registered attendees will also receive a link to access the virtual environment on-demand for a limited time once the live event is over.

    To see the full agenda and to register, please visit the FinConDX website.

  • The Bumpy Rise of the Tech-Savvy CFO in Healthcare Organizations

    The Bumpy Rise of the Tech-Savvy CFO in Healthcare Organizations

    The good news? The working relationship between technology leadership and financial officers in health systems organizations is improving. The bad news? Chasms between finance and IT remain, and they are common throughout health systems providers.

    Market Research firm Black Book Research recently found, in its “2019 Black Book CFO & Financial Leadership Survey,” that chief financial officers (CFOs) are no longer prioritizing cost-cutting and are becoming more aggressive in their technology spending. Interestingly, 52% of CFOs reported that they are shifting their priorities to financial technology investments, such as the implementation of advanced analytics, as well as 44% who cited increased spending on broader distributed ledger technologies.

    This is a dramatic change over previous years, where financial technology in many healthcare organizations witnessed negligence and budget cuts. “Ninety-one percent of CFOs surveyed agreed that their past organizational CIO and senior IT management did not support a culture where financial technology upgrades and acquisitions were prioritized as initiatives that impacted enterprise health system strategy,” the report found.

    The survey found that 90% of financial leaders and management strongly agreed that CIOs and IT management undervalued the needs of financial digital transformation and their financial tools. Technology leaders instead prioritized and convinced their boards that their electronic health record vendor-related offerings were the best investment going forward.

    The result? When it comes to finance technology in healthcare organizations, the world has become quite bifurcated. Consider this: Ninety-four percent of marginally performing hospital CFOs nationally claimed that they are not prepared to handle new healthcare delivery and payment models with their current financial software. Comparatively, 89% of the top financially performing hospitals in the country report having the organizational technology tools to address modified payment strategies.

    There’s also no rest for the weary financial officer, the survey found. While senior financial officers struggled with the pressures of smaller operating incomes, rising labor and supply costs, shrinking volumes, reduced reimbursements, declining patient volumes and changing healthcare delivery models, 83% report that in the past fiscal year that they received add-on responsibilities that included organizational productivity, strategic technology and innovation growth initiatives.

    “In a noticeable shift since the acquisition of enterprisewide EHR systems led by CIOs, CFOs have become the executive charged with digital transformations to improve competitive advantages, strategic growth and innovation across all customer touch points, while measuring the technologies’ ROI,” said Doug Brown, president of Black Book.

    Indeed, there has been a huge shift in CFO involvement in recent years. In fact, 88% of CFOs report having increased involvement in their health system IT agenda since the implementation of their enterprise EHR, as compared to 14% in 2015.

    But this dramatic rise hasn’t been without friction:

    • 85% of all respondents stated that their current organizational structure prevents enhanced CIO-CFO collaboration. Eighty-nine percent of CEOs interviewed disagree with this statement.
    • 82% of CFOs stated that they have an insufficient understanding of IT issues as the barrier to them not being included in technology selections and approvals prior to 2014.
    • 84% of CIOs surveyed in Q4 2018 claimed the processes and tools in finance are incomparable to IT functions and remain a significant barrier to mutual understanding.
    • 90% of all respondents agree that the absence of key performance indicators that link IT agendas to financial performance greatly limits their success.
    • 98% of respondents strongly agree that it’s the healthcare CFO’s job to ensure their organization fully realize the benefits of technology investments, not the CIO’s job, in 2019.

    While the CFO’s role in technology has grown, largely due to the substantial impact of EHR adoption—and this has caused significant stress between the CFO and CIO in many health services organizations—the working relationship is showing signs of becoming stronger and more collaborative. The report found that the continuing lack in understanding on both parties to converge on strategies, investment mindsets, healthcare customer experience, business models and agendas continue to keep the barriers high for many.

    — George V. Hulme

  • Will Blockchain Move Past Hype to Reality?

    Will Blockchain Move Past Hype to Reality?

    Blockchain has hit peak “hype,” according to Gartner’s recently published “Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies.” The financial world has been very optimistic about blockchain or distributed ledger technology (DLT)—the underlying technology behind bitcoin—and the impending disruption it can bring to the way the financial system works.

    Although the initial buzz around bitcoin has gradually died down over the last couple of years, DLT has gained a lot of traction in the industry. As a concept, distributed ledger and open network with encrypted data brings vast opportunities for ideation. But will it only be hype? Or will blockchain graduate from the lab environment to the real world? Only time will tell, but the idea of distributed ledger is here to stay.

    From Idea to Adoption

    Any new technology will go through its hype cycle before settling down with the complex reality of business adoption. Blockchain is most likely going through the cycle at this point in time. It may not be panacea for all the challenges faced by the industry today, but it definitely shows some initial promise of being a game-changer.

    We have very rarely seen industry cooperation like this for a new technology.  Financial institutions are excited and rightly so. Global financial markets potentially can save as much as $80 billion in operating costs if blockchain becomes a mainstream technology.

    The application of blockchain will exceed hype only when it addresses the core issues financial institutions face today: simplification and security. While cost takeout is a great value proposition, I believe that adoption of blockchain as a technology fundamentally should revolve around rationalizing the process value chain and providing robust security. Some of the initial use cases for financial services firms show a lot of promise, from the process simplification and digitization perspective leveraging distributed ledger, but there is still significant ground to cover before it becomes real.

    Why Blockchain Isn’t There Yet

    There is exciting amount of exploratory traction around blockchain use cases, but the reality is that no financial institution has yet implemented blockchain in production, and I don’t think it’s going to happen anytime soon.

    The success of blockchain as a technology hinges on three factors:

    Security – Recent lapses in bitcoin exchange and virtual robberies of digital money pose a significant threat to the underlying technology (blockchain itself). In a world where each participant will have his or her own private key, there will be many hurdles to cross in the barriers of data security. How safe will it be? How quickly will it scale up to expose all the vulnerabilities?

    Dealing with legacy – Many technologies have matured over the years, yet banks still run on mainframes! How blockchain interoperates with the legacy infrastructure in banks will be the most important aspect to watch out for. Is the idea to build a greenfield environment and re-imagine the financial world more pragmatic?

    Trust – Data ownership traditionally has been a source of power. Digital currency and federated data over blockchain will change the very existence of political hierarchies. How will businesses deal with it?

    Still, it’s a good bet to have in your long-term portfolio.

    Bill Gates once said, “we always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next 10. Don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction.”

    Although its foundational blocks are really solid, blockhain’s mainstream adoption in the near future is going to be tough. Hawk-eyed regulators will be picky about security threats and any negative news. But the collaboration on this technology is unprecedented and bodes well for the future, so I’m optimistic blockchain will become a reality at some point in time. Going by the wisdom of Bill Gates, I’m looking at five to seven years.

    About the Author / Mohit Sinha

    mohit-sinhaMohit Sinha is a client partner in the Finance Solutions group at Wipro Digital and currently manages the relationship with a top tier Investment Bank in London. He has over 14 years of experience spanning domain consulting and client relationship management in the Investment Banking and Wealth Management domain. He has been part of successful delivery of transformation initiatives across UK and Europe CIB and PWM, Derivatives Operations, SEPA transformation and CIB/PB Order and Trade Management areas. Connect with him on LinkedIn and Twitter.