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云端的一缕阳光

大小银行都纷纷拥抱云计算 2013 年 7 月 23 日 (0) 打印邮件

Renaissance Credit的董事长西甘·阿卡特米(Segun Akintemi)说：”我们公司只有一名IT员工。”这是一家尼日利亚借贷公司，它在2012年10月成立，并在前六个月签下了大约3000名客户。”每当我走过他的办公桌，他总是在上网。”该公司只有一名清闲的电脑专家并不是落后的标志。相反，Renaissance Credit在技术方面是领先于时代的。它的信息处理发生在”云”端，”云”指的是通过互联网提供软件和服务。

基于云端的银行业务必将对大小银行都产生影响。咨询公司赛讯(Celent)表示，银行预计今年将在IT方面投资1800亿美元。目前，基于云的服务所占比例很小，但有人估计，在2015年金融服务公司在云方面的投入总额将高达260亿美元。对于新来者来说，这一增长将降低壁垒，与在前期建设时投资数百万美元建立自己的安全数据中心相比，它们将会选择月租费少于1万美元的现代IT基础设施。这也将使大型银行变得更具成本效益。

由于没有传统的计算机系统来约束它们，小企业发展迅猛。Renaissance Credit几乎已完全拥抱云计算。该公司的员工通过云端打印文件、运用电子表格和阅读电子邮件。该公司记录客户信息、付款和贷款业务的银行软件运行在云计算平台上，该平台使用的是专业供应商坦密诺斯(Temenos)提供的现成银行软件。

通过使用标准化的软件，并在现成的数据中心上运行，该公司已大幅削减启动成本；根据客户数量，它只需支付一定的费用，并可以随着发展方便地扩大规模。它也能够迅速地获得发展。在与供应商签订合同之后，它花费了短短两个月时间就投入了生产。尽管它所有的IT业务外包出去，但它仍然需要至少一名IT人员。正如阿卡特米所说，他的主要工作是将新电脑从箱子中取出，并组装起来。

与新成立的或小规模的银行相比，大型银行较少将业务迁移至云端。这部分是因为遗留系统，另一部分是因为监管部门对数据安全和隐私的担忧。但是，支出的压力可能迫使这一改变发生。巴克莱(Barclays)的西蒙·塞缪尔斯(Simon Samuels)指出，在金融危机之前，欧洲大型银行的收入平均以每年18％的速度增加，但它们最近几年的收入已经大幅减少。改善成本收入比率的方式之一就是在云端开展业务。

负责微软(Microsoft)银行业务的科林·克尔(Colin Kerr)说，富裕国家的银行已经开始将不涉及敏感客户信息但需要大量计算资源的数据处理进行外包。这包括”蒙地卡罗”模拟等任务，银行需运行数百万次计算，而每次的变量略有不同，目的是为了在市场突然发生变化时，以评估它们的资产或衍生产品的价格可能发生的变化。

互联银行(Bankinter)是一家采用最新科技的西班牙银行，它在亚马逊(Amazon)的云平台上运行复杂的信用风险模拟。以前，利用银行自身的系统这将需要花费20个小时以上，而现在可在20分钟内完成。在需要安全的测试环境时，大型银行也租用云端的资源，以使它们能够在不需面对整个银行崩溃的风险情况下，检验自己的电脑系统，然后进行更改或更新。

许多银行都重新配置自己的电脑系统，以整合到私有的云端，这是一种混合方式，以单独使用一个数据中心（这些都被共享到”公共云”上），但与使用运行在公共云上的软件和系统相比，这可提高一些效率。永丰银行(Bank SinoPac)是一家台湾银行，通过把大型计算机迁移到私有云上，它将把IT基础设施的成本削减一半左右。巴克莱银行和德意志银行(Deutsche Bank)已经将某些业务迁移到私有云上。

但是，广泛采用云计算需要克服一些障碍。其中一个是对安全性和数据保护的担忧。对于资源有限的小型银行来说，与自己建立的数据中心相比，由亚马逊或微软等公司提供的大型数据中心可能更安全、更可靠。对于已经建立自己的安全数据中心的许多大型银行来说，它们是不愿将客户数据交给外人的。数据盗窃或银行在云端由于操作产生的大型系统故障无疑将促使监管部门严加管控。 不能无限发展

一些国家坚持认为，客户端的数据不能离开自己的国家，这可能迫使云计算公司在许多市场构建小型数据中心，从而缩减了成本节约的范围。许多监管机构也希望进行监察，正如一位IT专家所说，”把自己的手放在”持有客户数据的计算机服务器中。云服务提供商可能不愿意被监察，这是因为它们希望对服务器所在地进行保密。有人认为，”你越公开你的数据中心，它们就越不安全。”

这些问题可能抑制这一变化发生的速度，但不会影响其前进的方向。云计算的成本优势意味着银行服务势将进入这一领域。如果这样，银行IT部门的员工将更加清闲。 英文原文：

http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21582013-banks-big-and-small-are-embracing-cloud-computing-silver-linings

The IT cloud

Silver linings

Banks big and small are embracing cloud computing

“I’VE only got one IT guy,” says Segun Akintemi, the chief executive of Renaissance Credit, a Nigerian moneylender that opened for business in October 2012 and signed up about 3,000 customers in its first six months. “Whenever I walk past his desk he is surfing the web.” That the firm has just one bored computer specialist is not a sign of backwardness. On the contrary, Renaissance Credit is ahead of its time when it comes to technology. Its information processing takes place in the “cloud”, the term for software and services delivered over the internet.

The emergence of cloud-based banking promises to affect banks big and small. Banks are expected to spend almost $180 billion on IT this year, according to Celent, a consultancy. For the moment cloud-based services make up a tiny fraction of this amount, but by some estimates spending by financial-services firms on the cloud will total $26 billion in 2015. This increase should lower barriers to entry for newcomers, which can rent modern IT infrastructure at monthly fees of less than $10,000 rather than having to invest tens of millions of dollars upfront to build their own secure data centres. And it should also enable big banks to become much more cost-efficient.

Small firms, without legacy computer systems to constrain them, are the fastest movers. Renaissance Credit’s embrace of cloud computing has been almost total. Its employees type documents, run

spreadsheets and read e-mails in the cloud. Its banking software, which keeps track of clients, payments

and loans, runs on a cloud-computing platform using off-the-shelf banking software provided by Temenos, a specialist provider.

By using standard software and running it in existing data centres, the firm has dramatically cut its start-up costs; it pays a fee based on the number of clients it has and can simply keep scaling up as it grows. It has also been able to get off the ground quickly. It took just two months to go into operation after signing

contracts with its suppliers. Despite outsourcing all its IT activities, it still needs at least one geek on hand. His main job, Mr Akintemi says, is to take new computers out of their boxes and plug them in.

Big banks have generally migrated less of their activity to the cloud than newer, smaller ones. This is partly because of legacy systems, partly because of regulatory concerns about data security and privacy. But the pressure to reduce spending is likely to force the pace of change. Simon Samuels of Barclays notes that whereas revenues at big European banks rose by 18% a year on average before the financial crisis, they have shrunk in recent years. One way of improving cost-income ratios is to lob activities into the cloud. Banks in the rich world have started outsourcing the processing of data that does not involve sensitive client information but does require massive computing resources, says Colin Kerr, who heads Microsoft’s banking business. These include tasks such as “Monte Carlo” simulations in which banks run calculations millions of times over, each with slightly different variables, to assess what may happen to the prices of their assets or derivatives if markets move suddenly.

Bankinter, a tech-savvy Spanish bank, runs its complex credit-risk simulations on Amazon’s cloud platform. Calculations that previously took more than 20 hours to complete on the bank’s own systems are now done in 20 minutes. Big banks are also renting resources in the cloud when they need safe test environments in which they can mirror their own computer systems and then make changes or updates without the risk of crashing the entire bank.

Many banks are reconfiguring their own computer systems into private clouds, a hybrid step in which they have sole use of a data centre (these are shared in the “public cloud”), but derive some efficiencies from using the software and systems that run public clouds. Bank SinoPac, a Taiwanese lender, will cut its IT infrastructure costs by almost half by moving from a mainframe computer to a private cloud. Barclays and Deutsche Bank have moved some functions into private clouds.

There are, however, impediments to the wide adoption of cloud computing. One is the worry over security and data protection. For small banks with limited resources, the large data centres provided by firms such as Amazon or Microsoft are probably safer and more reliable than any that they could build themselves. Large banks, many of which have already built their own bomb-proof secure data centres, are reluctant to hand over client data to outsiders. The theft of data or a major systems failure by a bank with its operations in the cloud would doubtless prompt regulators to slam on the brakes, too. You cannot be cirrus

Some countries insist that client data are not allowed to leave their national borders, which could force cloud-computing firms to build small data centres in many markets, reducing the scope for cost savings. Many regulators also want to be able to inspect and, in the words of one IT specialist, “put their hand on” the computer server holding client data. Providers of cloud services can be reluctant to allow inspections

because they try to keep the locations of server farms secret. “The more you open up your data centres, the more vulnerable you make them,” says one.

These problems may change the pace but not the direction of travel. The cost advantages of cloud

computing mean that banking services are likely to move inexorably into the ether. If so, the staff in banks’ IT departments will have more time to brush up their solitaire skills. From the print edition: Finance and economics