Despite the slow adoption of cloud computing by the banking and financial services industry with security and reliability being the major concerns, financial institutions are quickly resorting to cloud-based services to achieve increased agility and lowered total cost of ownership (TCO). According to IDC, worldwide revenue from public IT cloud services exceeded $21.5 billion in 2010 and is expected to reach $72.9 billion in 2015. There is an emerging trend in which financial institutions are embracing “cloud solutions” as not just a ‘me-too’ option, but as solutions that yield competitive advantage due to shorter cycles of time to market for products and services. (more…)

The economy has disappointed in 2011, and 2012 looks similar. In the US, the housing crisis and high unemployment persist. The euro debt crisis threatens Europe with recession. Healthier regions like Asia are too small and too export-oriented to escape a downturn in the West. The best macro case appears to be halting progress on structural issues and continued weak growth.

Despite this, IT spend in banking and financial services grew in 2011 and looks poised for modest growth in 2012. Why is this happening? Banks and securities firms feel pressure both to reduce costs and to innovate. There are multiple ways to cut costs but the only way to simultaneously reduce unit costs and innovate is through (more…)

Enterprise applications delivered from the cloud have become a hot talking point in the tech industry recently. Fueled by an increasing focus on cost cutting, ease of use, scalability and faster time to market, cloud applications are being discussed in detail at various seminars and industry conferences. Taking a cue from these market indicators, most major enterprise application vendors have already started offering their applications via the cloud. Any enterprise application you name, including database, ERP, CRM, etc., is already being offered, in some form, through a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) or cloud-based model. A Content Management System (CMS) is no exception as we have begun to see the arrival of plenty of CMS applications delivered from the cloud. However, do these cloud-based CMS applications really bring a new paradigm for managing your content? Or, is it just old wine in a new bottle with all the associated industry pain points still present? (more…)