While the cloud computing industry continues to flourish, a variety of fascinating advancements have also emerged. Firstly, the multi-cloud and hybrid cloud have become the new normal. Additionally, a recent survey of around 600 US-based, cloud-focused IT professionals conducted by TECHnalysis Research earlier this year shows that in the medium-sized (100-999 employees) and large-scaled (1,000 + employees) enterprises, the total number of public cloud services employed by firms was 3.1, and almost 87 percent of those organisations already had a private cloud and have used a total of 1.6 private cloud services.
The figures are important and their interpretation is much more intriguing. Businesses, educational institutions, non-profits, and other massive organizations are not dependent on a single company for all their cloud computing needs. There are several explanations for such a practice. In certain cases, it is necessary to keep efficient vendors honest in the price point of view and it also gives negotiating power to the firm. On the other hand, the usage of diverse cloud services is to combat the geographical restrictions, legal standards, policy practices, or such other reasons that allow preferring a particular vendor for a specific location. Moreover, further research helps to state that certain cloud computing services provide different features or specialized business experience, that makes them more equipped for a particular workload or industry, than others.
One of the ideal indicators of this specialization pattern is IBM Cloud service for ‘financial firms’. As officially unveiled last week, in collaboration with Europe-based BNP Paribas and the previously announced US-based partnership with Bank of America, the IBM Cloud for Financial Services is designed on a tightly oriented IBM Cloud Policy Framework for Financial Services. This system, which was created in collaboration with Bank of America, integrates the decades of knowledge and business insight that IBM has gained through dealing with such financial institutions. The further fascinating fact about this new IBM Cloud service is that it is based on the in-house experience of specific legal regulations, enforcement, and security concerns for the finance industry, that IBM has acquired for several years in collaboration with its main financial clients.
While nobody in the cloud infrastructure industry cares to speak about this, the pace of innovation and market catch-up across public cloud vendors is so high that it is simply becoming harder for platforms to differentiate themselves solely on functional capabilities. The more significant fact is how various cloud infrastructure systems approach and seek industry-specific solutions. Another crucial thing to note is that we are quickly progressing beyond days of general-purpose cloud storage applications and going straight into the realm of advanced solutions. As a result, essential business or workload experience may continue to gain more importance in the future.
The other similar argument is that businesses are opting for various kinds of cloud services to handle specific styles of workloads. Financial companies like BofA and BNP Paribas have been utilizing cloud infrastructure for less responsive workloads for years, but shifting core financial systems to the public cloud is a vital issue. That is where IBM’s Cloud Policy Framework for Financial Institutions, as well as the recent Financial Services Technology Advisory Council and it’s Cyber Protection and Enforcement Center, as well as IBM Research Business Development Hub, is paying higher attention to.
Over the past few years, the notion of industry-specific cloud applications has acquired great importance from the big three cloud storage vendors, and increasingly niche services like the recent one from IBM are likely to meet greater competition as time goes on.
