Fintech companies around the world are transforming how financial services are delivered. Nowhere is that more apparent than in customer service, especially around complaints, disputes, and fraud operations, with new entrants redefining what good looks like. Australian firms such as Afterpay, the buy-now, pay-later giant acquired by Square, have succeeded by offering new products and experiences in line with consumer preferences for simple, intuitive, streamlined services.

In the late 1960s, there was a rock band called Ten Years After and I liked the name the first I heard about them. I wanted to use "Splunk and the Financial Services Industry: Ten Years After" as the title of this blog entry, but it’s been more than ten years since I wrote the first Splunk Blogs entry on Splunk and the Financial Services Industry. As you can tell, a lot has changed since then and more than a decade is an internet lifetime in technology.

Embracing the cloud is not just a case of improving infrastructure, experts believe, but also a way to drive transformation. Many of the world’s largest financial exchanges are transforming the way they run global capital markets through the adoption of cloud computing technologies. In November, financial derivatives exchange CME Group entered a 10-year partnership with Google that will move CME’s IT infrastructure and markets to the cloud.

Regulatory compliance and data privacy requirements require financial institutions (FIs) to consider carefully where their applications are running and where the customer data is stored. The data protection and data sovereignty laws in most countries require an enterprise to keep data in certain geographic locations. PCI Data Security Standard, for example, regulates the way the customer and financial transactions data is stored and transmitted.

Software development in the banking and finance industry can make you feel like you’re wearing chains. Regulation, compliance, upfront costs, privacy, legacy systems, fear of cyberattacks, and an “if it ain’t broke” approach can lead to a lack of innovation. Despite these challenges, some technology-forward banks like Capital One, JP Morgan Chase, HSBC, and Wells Fargo have embraced the cloud and introduced DevSecOps and cloud-friendly architectural practices.

Organisations in the banking, insurance, and financial services sectors have been slower than others in moving to the cloud due to concerns over security, data residency, and privacy. For more traditional financial institutions, there is also the not insignificant consideration that their core banking systems are running on decades old on-prem architecture that is just not possible to shift to the public cloud. Nevertheless, adoption of the cloud in banking and finance is happening.

The financial services industry has evolved at an astonishing rate in recent years, underpinned by rapid advances in technology. Financial institutions (FIs) are digitising their customer journeys and scaling-up transformation. Cloud is a catalyst for enterprise business transformation and is a focus for C-suite executives and board members of financial services organisations.

Monitoring business-critical applications is just as vital as deploying them since their performance directly impacts your ability to meet business goals. When it comes to the banking industry, ensuring superior application performance of applications is crucial to enabling smooth banking operations. But it’s also complex since banks deploy interconnected applications across on-premise and cloud.