CloudBus

The banking sector is finally on fire in the use of cloud, as regulators ease the pressure on the use of cloud and as the banks technology strategy  steps down from its ivory tower and embraces the cloud as the saviour. Whether it is mobility, social media, analytics or real time secure transaction, the cloud delivers it all and the year 2017 will be the year of the PAAS for Banking. PAAS takes cloud deployment to a new level, it allows banks to customise and develop based on their needs, if they need nothing, they can use the vanilla PAAS solution, if they want to add more processes or bells and whistles PAAS solutions will allow them to do this easily. PAAS solutions will offer both hybrid and non-hybrid deployment, with adequate security built in the cloud architecture, the PAAS banking solutions will be an accelerator for banks to deliver innovative banking solutions to their customers without robbing the bank and in a small delivery cycle of weeks rather than quarters...

This article was published in Information Week India on 10th October and is reproduced in this blog. India is poised for a digital revolution. With a government pushing digital services, and a huge focus on on empowering every citizen with an identity card, a bank account, insurance and a digital interface, the future is bright for IT in India. With the announcement of opening local data centers in India by Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, Microsoft is well placed to explore the huge opportunities that will be unfolded in the days to come.  The Microsoft India cloud proposes to begin with three data centers and will provide the world's best cloud computing that India needs so desperately to handle the large volume of digital transactions,  need to cut down costs and handle the data that will be generated by digitally enabling a billion Indian citizens. Additionally, Microsoft will be able to offer their cloud services in a number of Indian languages, thus eliminating the need...

India's biggest challenge has been to empower its citizens with financial inclusion by providing banking to its unbanked population to Banking. The government's initiative of opening 15 million accounts in one day sets the tone to make sure that every adult citizen has a bank account in India.  Critics say it cannot be done, but we know from history that carpet bombing is the best way to overcome a challenge. The Indians have set out to a economic transformation in their country, by empowering its unbanked citizens the menace of cash in the system can be overcome thus improving the GDP of India. It is estimated that the cash economy in India is bigger than the legal economy in India, the cash in this system is known as black money in India and has strong parallel network for banking in cash. If you use a credit or debit card with an Indian merchant he will charge you about 2% to 3% extra as the transaction fee for using the card, this encourages customers to pay in cas...

As the year of SMAC the outlier which changed  the fortunes of business across the world in 2013. Looking into the crystal glass, we see that next year 2014 will the year of Community Clouds which will change the fortunes of companies which specialize in data center solutions. We will see community clouds being build by the Fortune 500 companies in a collaborative manner, business across Europe will drive the adoption of Community Clouds in Europe to adhere to the ENISA guidelines. Cloud Computing now moves beyond cost it is about reliability, economics of scale, security and mutli device support and global standards. Community clouds will be adopted by the banks of Europe, the pharmaceutical companies of Europe, the European Union and more. Developing regions in the globe too will adopt cloud computing, Africa will lead the charge with large nations like Brazil, Latin American countries and across the APAC region. A Bus in Mumbai, A community initiative ! Everyone is wor...

Come January we will have 7 new Indian Banks given licences to operate from the many applicants. The new licences will be given with conditions attached for rural thrust in banking and also social banking. As the applicants eagerly await their licences and start head hunting for their leadership the promoters will need to review whether Cloud Computing could be  the Elixir for getting them operational in weeks rather then months. Cloud computing will give them reach to the remote rural hamlets in India and also be effective, reliable and a secure vehicle to reach banking technology to the 40 million unbaked Indians. As the head hunters set the wheels in motion to hire the new suite of leaders to put execution plans into action it may the time for the Board of these promoter Banks to consider Cloud Computing for their profitability, agility and secure banking. Are New Indian Banks Ready to Fly into the Cloud ? Photo by Amitav Thamba Hiring Technology leaders from the conv...

Recently Forrester stated that 70% of "private clouds" aren't really clouds at all http://www.networkworld.com/news/2013/022613-forrester-private-clouds-267108.html Therein lies a tale of deceit, misinformation and false gratification of many organizations believing they have a cloud in place.  To get the facts right we need to revisit the definition of cloud computing as defined by NIST which in may opinion is the final authority on cloud computing standards and is followed by the industry and professionals.  http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-145/SP800-145.pdf Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared  pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that  can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.  This cloud model is composed of five essential characte...

Today's program on cloud computing for Business at Bangalore was well received and was attended by Senior Business Leaders. Some of the keen observations was the lack of adoption of cloud computing by business in India because of poor internet connectivity in smaller cities and rural areas. There were live examples of challenges in getting reliable internet access and bandwidth and more needs to be done to fix this problem to make cloud computing adoption a reality. The second takeaway was the large  technology  cost to support transactions in Banking sector, almost about Rs. 50 a transaction was the estimated cost. Cloud could substantially lower this technology cost by banks adopting cloud computing. Some banks are there in a nascent stage and some Banks offer their application as a SAAS based core banking solutions in a virtualized environment which is marketed as a cloud. More needs to be done in this area and one solution was to build a dedicated and secure cloud ...

Cloud Computing provides Agility, Economy, Speed and much more but it cannot be adopted with the Regulator's support. Lack of guidance for compliance has choked Cloud Adoption and has made cloud adoption similar to  climbing a steep Rock with no guidance. . Cloud Adoption is like Climbing a Steep Rock ! It is time for the Regulator to understand the Cloud Benefits, overcome its fears on Privacy and Security and provide guidelines for Adoption. Let 2012 be the year when Regulators support cloud adoption by providing compliance guidelines and may business and the customer benefit by Cloud Adoption. Are the Regulators Listening ? Let  healthcare, banking, insurance, financial service and other regulated business benefit and server it customers better with the Regulators support and guidance for Compliance in the Cloud.

When the world decides to Bank on Digital Money we will Go Green and change the way we handle Money! Will Banks change to Digtial money, in the last five decades I have see the face of Banking change globally and Digital Money will also be the future of Banking. My first experience with Banks was when I  operated a Children's Saving Account with a Bank in Bangalore. I could not  see the bank employees face at the teller for many years, I was too short to reach the window. But my father persisted that I learn how to Bank and he taught me to get my bank statement (held in little note book called a passbook) manually updated from huge paper based ledgers. The bank used to  give me a nice metal token when I had to withdraw money, the process of getting your money from your Bank those days did take a while, so I always carried a  book with me. Most of this remains true even today for traditional brick and mortar banking in India....