This expansion has come as more market players realize the significant potential opportunities for their businesses.
The drive to use more cloud technology in finance has come from a variety of directions. Some firms are looking to optimize their IT budgets and streamline operational models, while others are looking to deliver more computational power to investment teams who are experimenting with quantitative investing techniques. In some sense, the conversation around “cloud strategy” has become outmoded as cloud technology—from storage to compute to third-party cloud software—have become closely wedded to all aspects of how firms operate.
Even as cloud technology becomes seemingly ubiquitous, adoption remains uneven across the industry, with many firms still at the beginning of their adoption journey. This journey with cloud typically begins with experimentation around a discrete goal. For example, many IT departments have started with risk calculations, which require bursts of computing power well-suited to cloud computing.
Along the way, many firms have encountered a host of nuanced challenges in implementation. While concerns around security often dominate the conversation, more nuanced issues of governance and organizational change are often just as important.
Managing cloud adoption across a small hedge fund, let alone a sprawling global bank, often requires extensive collaboration to ensure compliant data storage and control of resources. These issues permeate to the level of individual developers, who may have to think about optimizing code in new ways to use compute resources efficiently.
The rewards of cloud—rapid prototyping, efficient computing infrastructure, cost savings and more—have convinced many firms to push through the challenges. Over the course of Bloomberg’s own cloud journey and in conversations with clients, we have repeatedly encountered the importance of setting clear objectives. The strategic dimensions of cloud extend beyond the simple pursuit of costs savings, and achieving them requires careful direction-setting and monitoring on the part of CTOs and senior technology professionals.
At Bloomberg, we are using cloud technology to make data and analytics easily accessible for clients. Bloomberg’s flagship Market Data Feed (B-PIPE) via Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure providdes cloud-native data access to capital markets firms. This delivery mechanism offers the highest level of flexibility on delivery of real-time market information, with no compromise on latency or breadth of data availability.
The marriage of cloud-native data with cloud-based applications offers huge opportunities for forward-thinking organizations.
We invite you to contact us to learn more about how Bloomberg can partner with you on your cloud journey.
Tony McManus Chief Information Officer for Enterprise Data Bloomberg