Google persuades large bank to use the cloud | Hacker News Reader

Google persuades large bank to use the cloud

bbc.co.uk

40 pointstpatke23 comments

I don't know where people get this idea that large banks still run everything on technology hardware that they own - it's just not true in general. As an example, there are organisations like TSYS and First Data out there to which a number of banks outsource some or all of their transaction processing operations, from issuing credit and debit cards through card transaction processing to sending statements out in the post. See http://www.tsys.com/solutions_services/Issuers/index.cfm and http://www.firstdata.com/en_us/products/financial-institutio... to get an idea of what a bank can outsource if it wants to. So what's remarkable about outsourcing email/calendar/etc to Google's cloud when competitors have already outsourced their credit card operation to a cloud run by TSYS?

At least in the banks I deal with, there is a huge difference between what is considered core, and peripheral services that 1) rarely hold sensitive data, if any; 2) never hold the master and 3) are not part of the day to day banking experience (i.e. sending cheque books, delivering credit cards).

The psychological barrier I see is 'running the transaction' vs. 'reporting on it weeks after the fact'.

They might manage to convince them to use some Chromebooks, too. They still seem to be pretty expensive at around $400, though. I wish they made them based on ARM already. I wonder if they are just waiting for the arrival of Cortex A15 before they replace Atom. Samsung should have a dual core 2 ghz Cortex A15 processor in Q2.

There's no Chrome for ARM (currently).

The Android browser and Chrome teams are, as far as I understand, completely separate.

Older versions of Chromium work just fine on ARM. For example the ARM port of Ubuntu provides Chromium 10 packages. I remember reading that newer versions don't build, but I don't know why.

I have to give Google props on this one. I've spent a lot of time selling tech platforms / programs to the larger banks in North America. Speaking bluntly, most of the adoption is being driven by a struggle to keep the lights on, vs. a natural comfort with the cloud.

It would be interesting to share notes, but I'm finding the adoption is fairly peripheral (non core systems) with a large lock down on the data that is made available. Part of the problem is tech propensity, (in the U.S.) is partly regulation based, and part is because those making buying decisions simply do not use these tools.

It's going to be an interesting path forwards. The culture change for these organizations is going to take time.

Does European law even allow banking data to be outside of Europe?

Seeing how that worked out with European flights passenger data, I am surprised there is no discussion of making European banking data being stored outside of Europe somehow mandatory - to prevent terrorism and all that good stuff.

There was a good deal of discussion around storing European banking data in the US by the SWIFT network. The anti-terrorism legislation passed in the US which in effect meant that European banking customer data was accessible to the US. This was in violation of EU privacy laws.

This was in violation of EU privacy laws.

Wich did not prevent the "information exchange". Anti-Terrorism beats any other legal arguments.

According to the article no customer data will be stored at Google's datacenters.

Yeah this is only about office software.

And since in the article it says "its not about costs", its for sure about cost ;-)

Google will probably be bank rolling a significant % of the transition project.

It's hard to imagine an environment where users are using spreadsheets, documents and email on Google's servers and not leaking some customer data into those tools.

Google has multiple datacenters in Europe.

Apparently its the biggest single deal Google has signed for its cloud services. Are financial services ready for the cloud now?

> Are financial services ready for the cloud now?

I'm not really sure what you are thinking of with this question, but, AFAIK you can't say that finance has high standards with their IT, I don't think the quality of service and software of a 'cloud' solution can bring any problems per se. Making the whole thing working seamlessly with the 'corporation culture' is another question.

It's going to be a very slow process, that's for sure. But the financial crisis is forcing them to cut costs everywhere. Modernizing their infrastructure just happens to coincide with that.

This is why the economic crisis can actually be a great way to replace old technology and old companies, with new disruptive ones, because it forces their customers to switch to the new more productive or inexpensive model. In the end the industry is better off for it.

Some financial services have already moved to the cloud, NASDAQ uses Amazon S3 for at least one product (NASDAQ Market Replay) and have done since 2008.

When it comes to banking the picture is a bit different. I know at least one small provider of banking middle office solutions, Five Degrees (www.fivedegrees.nl), is working on using the Azure service for some services.

Interesting times. As an IT developer in the financial industry, I try to follow this closely.

"The bank told the BBC it would use Google's tools only for internal communication."

BBVA's director of innovation, Carmen Herranz, stressed that all customer data and other key banking systems would "stay in our own data centres" and be completely separate from the cloud solution.

I really wonder how they are going to make internal communication without exposing customer information to the cloud provider. For me the combination of these statemens sounds like FUD.

I think he means they aren't moving their customer databases and what not to the cloud. But when VP Tom emails VP Susy about the presentation for X, they will be using Google Apps.

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