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.

> 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.